Big League Dreams (Small Worlds)

by Allen Hoffman

  Rabbi Max never entered banks, and that gave Boruch Levi pause; he had come to the spacious brick synagogue building to ask the self-styled “poor man’s rabbi” to lead the afternoon memorial service and to deliver some spiritually uplifting words in Isidore Weinbach’s formal rose garden.

  Boruch Levi would never have had such a preposterous idea before his visit to Krimsk. Who was more extreme and uncompromising than he himself, the King of the Junkmen ? Boruch Levi had worshiped at the altar of obstinacy for years. Furthermore, he didn’t believe that his unaccustomed efforts as peacemaker would succeed, but nonetheless he had this powerful impulse, almost a passion, to bring Isidore Weinbach and Rabbi Max together. In their perversity they seemed to have much in common; their wounds were self-inflicted, and through mutual contact the spiritually impoverished and financially impoverished could enrich each other. As with old bottles, rags, and junk metal, Boruch Levi understood that their potential value could be realized through connecting the appropriate markets.

  As Boruch Levi approached the synagogue building, he was surprised to find the front doors wide open an hour and a half after the morning services had ended. The sanctuary was dark and empty, but beyond the open basement door the stairway light was shining invitingly.

  Boruch Levi descended to the basement, where to his dismay he found Rabbi Max funneling wine from a small cask into a motley assortment of bottles. Concentrating intensely on his measurements and struggling to balance the weight of the bulky cask so as not to waste any of his precious creation, the rabbi wasn’t even aware that anyone had entered. Boruch Levi called the rabbi’s name. With no surprise or embarrassment, Rabbi Max glanced up, annoyed at having been disturbed.

  “Rabbi Max,” Boruch Levi said, an almost naive hurt in his voice, “you promised me that you wouldn’t ever do this here.”

  “Shalom, Boruch Levi. Welcome. Just let me finish with these small bottles. They’re a nuisance, but very popular.”

  The rabbi finished, then put down his cask and motioned for Boruch Levi to come to him. The rabbi stood behind a picket fence of bottles, over which they faced each other uneasily. Boruch Levi’s disdain increased as he approached.

  “Do you know that the front doors of the building are wide open, and so is the door to the basement, with the light blazing on the stairway to guide the world down to this?” Boruch asked in proprietary disgust.

  “There’s nothing to worry about. Your friends the police aren’t like you. They don’t come around very early in the morning. They wait to arrest me on the street,” Rabbi Max answered casually, enjoying his sponsor’s discomfort.

  “Who’s talking about the police? Never mind the police. The hell with the police,” Boruch Levi fumed. “What about the Jews? It’s a disgrace. This is supposed to be a synagogue. What if some Jew should come to see you, Rabbi, and find you like this? It’s a disgrace for the Jews.”

  Rabbi Max remained calm. “There’s nothing to worry about then,” he said, pointing to the strange collection of bottles in various stages of production. “These,” he repeated with an almost paternal pride, “these are my little hasidim. Faithful, true, and full of life. And like good Jews everywhere, persecuted by the authorities.” Rabbi Max chuckled at his little joke.

  Boruch Levi held his tongue at the barb aimed at his hasidic Krimsker background.

  “Rabbi, it’s a scandal, and I am ashamed of you.”

  Rabbi Max smiled ironically in agreement. Boruch Levi chose to ignore this further taunt.

  “You don’t have to carry on like this. You can perform as a rabbi and make an honest living.” Boruch Levi paused to take a breath before he made his suggestion. “I want you to lead the afternoon services in Isidore Weinbach’s rose garden. Sunday is the memorial day of his father’s death, and he wants to say kaddish, the memorial prayer.”

  Rabbi Max stood looking at Boruch Levi as if he had suggested that Rabbi Max officiate at J. P. Morgan’s or John D. Rockefeller’s conversion to Judaism.

  “Oh you do, do you?” the rabbi asked.

  “Yes, I do,” Boruch Levi insisted without giving an inch. “And I think it would be nice if you said a few words either before or after the service. It might be a good idea to mention the roses. God created them, too. It won’t take more than a half hour. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” the rabbi asked, his voice rising as he lost his composure.

  “Yes, that’s all. This has to stop. You have to start acting like a mensch.”

  The rabbi had maintained some control until Boruch Levi had uttered the last word, “mensch.”

  “Like a mensch!” Rabbi Max shouted. “I’ll tell you why I’m doing what I’m doing here on one condition, that you promise not to tell another living soul. Do you agree? Good. I’ll tell you. The night after the Volstead Act became law, I had a dream in which my holy mother, may she rest in peace, appeared to me and begged me to become a bootlegger.”

  A maniacal, impish grin spread across the rabbi’s flushed face. Boruch Levi had a momentary desire to wipe it off with a backhand slap, but he thought better of it, turned around, and climbed the steps.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ON HIS WAY OUT OF THE SYNAGOGUE, BORUCH LEVI carefully closed the doors behind him. He normally would have slammed them hard enough to break every bottle in the basement. He would also have proceeded to fight tooth and nail to throw Rabbi Max out of his, Boruch Levi’s, synagogue and back into the street where he had found him, but things had changed. Boruch Levi sensed that in closing the heavy ornate doors he was ending a period in his life. His visit to Krimsk had taught him more respect for the complexity and difficulty of life, and he could no longer charge through everything with his former explosive selfassurance and blind certainty.

  There was no doubt that Boruch Levi was angry at Rabbi Max—a steaming, roiling anger at having been taunted, betrayed, and humiliated as Rabbi Max reduced his life to a satirical parody. Rabbi Max was very fortunate that Boruch Levi had gone back to Krimsk; otherwise, the “poor man’s rabbi” might have found himself lying in a puddle of poor man’s hooch with a terrible headache. Although his anger was real, Boruch Levi managed partially to overcome it because his primary emotion was exasperation with Rabbi Max for not having the common sense to accept genuine friendship. (Whose friendship could ever be more genuine than Boruch Levi’s?)

  Although Boruch Levi was now one of the enemy, it hadn’t always been that way. Several years ago Boruch Levi had received word from Krimsk of his mother’s death. That same night he once again dreamed of burning cats, the same dream he had on that final Tisha B’Av in Krimsk. Not knowing what to make of the recurring dream and sensing that he needed some spiritual guidance to interpret it, he turned to Rabbi Max, unique in his coarse informality, tolerance of lax religious practices, and compassion for the poor.

  Only the rabbi’s distrust of the rich exceeded his envy of them, and consequently they did not flock to his irregular ministry. In his original storefront, the poor and only the poor felt at home, for Rabbi Max went beyond the hasidic enthusiasm for identifying the holy sparks in the secular and the sinful; the rabbi loved equally to burlesque the holy by calling attention to the contradictions, absurdities, and general arrogance that so often accompany the divine. People said that it was a good thing the dead were laid out horizontally at the funerals the rabbi spoke at; otherwise no one would know whether they were at a funeral or a wedding. Rabbi Max once stated that the only true religious Jews he had ever met were all Bolsheviks, and that it was a pity that they had to burn in hell as heretics.

  On those few occasions when as a poor, struggling junk peddler Boruch Levi had felt a need for religion, he had entered Rabbi Max’s hole-in-the-wall. Occasionally inspired, often entertained, he had always felt welcome.

  “It’s not so bad,” Rabbi Max had commented after hearing Boruch Levi’s dream of the burning cats. “Personally, I hate cats; they make me sneeze. On the other hand, the Talmud says that you can learn
modesty from a cat since it crouches low when it makes, but I don’t see what that has to do with your particular dream unless you have a burning sensation when you make. No? That’s good. You should be well. At any rate, you had this dream the last time you were with your mother. Maybe she’s trying to tell you something. They don’t have phones over there in that medieval swamp, so when she was alive she couldn’t reach you in person. Now at least she can get in touch. See what happens tonight.”

  That night Boruch Levi’s mother appeared to him and begged him to become religious and to observe stringently the Sabbath and the dietary laws. In the morning he ran to the rabbi, who listened quietly and said, “It might have been worse. It might even be for the best. This way you won’t work on the Sabbath, and maybe you won’t become too rich.”

  Rabbi Max was both right and wrong. His hasid didn’t work on the Sabbath, but he did become rich. As Boruch Levi prospered, he helped Rabbi Max in every way he could, including buying the respectable brick building. But the more he did, the less Rabbi Max appreciated it. He told Boruch Levi that from the shame of accepting support from the rich, he could not sleep nights. Taking advantage of the legal provisions permitting the manufacture of wines for religious ritual use, Rabbi Max went into business in his own kitchen with the same lack of discretion in crime as in his sermons.

  The rawest rookie on the police force could and did arrest him as he sold his religiously inspired homemade spirits from door to door. When a scandalized Boruch Levi bailed him out the first time, Rabbi Max, laughing at what he termed Boruch Levi’s naïveté, explained to the uneducated rag dealer that according to the Talmud, Prohibition was thoroughly nonsensical because even the rabbinic sages did not have the authority to proclaim a restrictive decree too harsh for the people to live with. Boruch Levi suggested that the rabbis and the Talmud had nothing to do with it, but the Congress of the United States and the Treasury Department certainly did. In response Rabbi Max chided Boruch Levi for putting the goyish Congress above the sages, since the former were known alcoholics whereas the latter were merely suspected bootleggers.

  Boruch Levi saw that nothing could be done with this mad, high-spirited passion. To protect the good name of the Jewish community, he took it upon himself to send the synagogue some good pre-Prohibition whiskey from the saloons he had bought out immediately before the Volstead Act became law. In addition, Boruch Levi exacted a promise from Rabbi Max that he would keep his bootlegging out of the synagogue. A promise, Boruch Levi had just discovered this morning, that Rabbi Max had not kept.

  Before leaving for Krimsk, he had warned the rabbi to stop the bootlegging; with Boruch Levi gone, there wouldn’t be anyone to bail him out of jail for the Sabbath. In fact, Boruch Levi had sent five hundred dollars in cash to tide the rabbi over during the summer. Of course, they both knew that Rabbi Max would be in jail by Wednesday and that the wonderfully loyal Inspector Doheen would be sure to have him released for the Sabbath.

  The thought of his friend Doheen brought Boruch Levi back to the present. He recalled with satisfaction his own part in protecting the chief of police during last week’s Prohibition raid. No one loved the chief more than Inspector Doheen, not even Boruch Levi.

  Boruch Levi knew how to appreciate both love and hate; Rabbi Max didn’t. For a real rabbi, one had to look at the Krimsker Rebbe, something that Boruch Levi had not done in seventeen years. Even in the middle of America, the rebbe didn’t care what others, rich or poor, Jews or goyim, thought of him.

  As he sat behind the wheel of his car, Boruch Levi sadly realized that Rabbi Max had known that Boruch Levi’s rediscovering the world of his youth in Krimsk would end their relationship. The rabbi had been poisonously opposed to the visit, mocking his desire to return to that “dung heap of stagnation.”

  Now Boruch Levi needed a new rabbi. He felt himself maturing, but he seemed to be growing back into Krimsk. That wasn’t the way things were supposed to happen in America. He was perplexed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IN HER JUNKYARD BORUCH LEVI’S SISTER, MALKA, pulled a large handkerchief from her overalls and wiped her forehead to give herself more time to think. In her grimy hands the fresh cloth became smudged and dark. She had been standing in the hot morning sun, sorting a month’s accumulation of tires, when a peddler with his horse and wagon pulled into her yard with a load. She hadn’t been expecting him, since the peddlers collected during the day and came to the junkyards in the afternoon to sell their day’s accumulation.

  “That looks like nickel to me, and that’s worth some money,” the peddler said.

  Malka pensively tapped the ground with one of the oversize unlaced army boots that she always wore when working in the yard.

  “Look at that metal. Zinc, too, and those bottles are perfect! You dream about a load like this.”

  “I don’t dream about anything,” Malka said.

  She really didn’t.

  “That’s too bad; dreams are sweet things, if I say so myself.”

  Carey was not one of Malka’s regular customers. He generally sold to Bierenbaum or to the Greek. Obviously unable to get his price yesterday from either one, he had left everything on the wagon overnight and was trying his luck with Malka this morning. He had a day, maybe two days’ work there.

  “What do you want?” she asked with no sense of urgency and little interest, as if she were annoyed at having as important an activity as sorting tires interrupted by such nonsense.

  “Well, dreams are cheap, and I want to unload so I can go about my business. I’m willing to take twenty dollars for the lot and be finished with it,” he said, stroking his horse’s muzzle, as if this humane act would demonstrate his honesty and virtue.

  Malka figured that at his price she could turn a profit, but she suspected that his regular buyers hadn’t offered him any more than fifteen, and he would take that from her rather than lose face by going back to one of them. The day was slipping away from him. The question was whether he could get his hands on any more nickel. If he could, she wanted him to bring it to her.

  “You often have dreams like this?” she asked, nodding in the direction of the wagon.

  “No, ma’am. This, as you can plainly see, doesn’t happen very often,” he answered.

  “I’ll give you fifteen dollars for it,” she said with a finality that didn’t leave any room for bargaining.

  Carey suddenly looked distressed. He pushed his hat back in consternation.

  “It’s worth more than that,” he protested weakly. Gaiety and confidence had deserted him at Malka’s nonnegotiable offer.

  Malka shrugged her shoulders. “Not to me it isn’t.”

  Carey looked down and kicked the dirt.

  “Make up your mind. I’ve got work to do.”

  “I’ll take it, but it’s worth more,” he said.

  Malka reached into the upper pocket of her overalls, took out a wad of bills, and peeled off a ten and five.

  “Dump it over there,” she said, pointing to an area near the scale house.

  As she handed him the bills, she caught the faint scent of liquor on his breath. To be drinking so early meant that Carey must have had a tough time with his regular yards. After doing no better here, he’d be needing another drink soon, and that gave her an idea. She let him get on his wagon and go fifteen feet so he could fully taste the bitterness of failure before she called to him.

  “Hey, Carey, c’mere—Yeah, now!”

  He climbed off his wagon and came back to her. She didn’t take a step in his direction. She stood with her brawny arms across her ample chest and looked him straight in the eye.

  “You know what’s going on in this town, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Much as most, I guess,” he answered vaguely.

  “How much did you think your stuff was worth?”

  Carey looked suspicious. Malka was not one to raise her price after a deal had been struck and paid for. In fact, she wasn’t one for bargaining; it was her price—
take it or leave it.

  “Twenty dollars, like I said,” he answered without much spirit.

  “Well, maybe, in which case I would owe you five more dollars, wouldn’t I?”

  Carey looked very uncomfortable now, as if he were a mouse with which a cat named Malka was playing.

  “I guess so,” Carey said.

  “You know I would,” she fairly boomed.

  She reached into her money pocket and fished out a five-dollar bill that promptly became smudged with grime in her stubby, tire-sorting fingers.

  “You know I would,” she repeated, “but of course I can’t let you have it. Not for this load I can’t. It’s not worth more than fifteen. But you might have something else I could use for these five dollars.”

  The peddler, not a bad-looking man, remained suspicious. The thought crossed his mind that she might be propositioning him, but he rejected it; Malka never looked at anyone other than her elegant gimp of a husband. That match, Carey thought, must have been made in heaven, since no one down here could have come up with it.

  “All that’s on the wagon is all there is,” he said innocently.

  “Carey, you know what’s going on in this town. You’re a knowledgeable man, and you might know where my husband goes to do his betting.”

  Carey’s eyes suddenly flickered with a flash of interest at the dirty bill waving in her hand, and Malka was certain that he knew. He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he kicked at the ground.

  “If you don’t know, I understand, but a few cool drinks on a hot day like today would be a sweet dream come true, Mr. Carey. And once I put it back in my pocket, it won’t come out again.”

  “Heinie,” he said softly, as if his throat were very, very dry.

  “Where?” she asked severely.

  “He runs a cigar store around the corner from the post office on Eighth Street.”

  He reached for the money. She gave it to him.

  “All right then. It’s a deal,” she said.