“Board!” called the conductor. With the sound of steel crunching and grinding against steel, the train lurched forward unsteadily, as if it understood its role in this sorrowful scene.
Max watched the cars pass before him. For a second or two it seemed as if he and the platform under his feet were moving and the cars standing still. He looked about him. People were waving, some weeping quietly. Augustus Glick was dabbing his old eyes with a handkerchief that was grey with dampness. Bryna Glick’s eyes were hidden behind sun- glasses. Sarah and Henry Glick, too, hid their eyes behind sunglasses. There was Morris Moskover, the Local Sage, silent for one of the rare moments in his life.
And then Maximilian’s attention was drawn beyond the inner circle of Jews, to another large gathering of men and women who had come to the station and now stood looking mournful as the last car in the train rounded a bend beyond the station and disappeared heading eastward. The people in the inner circle presented no surprise to Maximilian. But the people in the outer circle, standing about a bit awkwardly and shaking hands with the rabbi’s congregants, they were a surprise to the boy.
They were the purple people, the ones with the green spots.
Part Two
Seven
It is no exaggeration to say that the young rabbi hired to replace Rabbi Kaminsky became the talk of the town within twenty-four hours of his setting foot in Steelton. With the approach of Jewish high holidays in October — Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement — it had been urgent that a new rabbi be found and the Central Jewish Agency in Toronto, charged with the search, dispatched a report in record time to Zelig Peikes, president of Steelton’s Jewish community.
“We believe we have just the right man. He’s young, a bachelor, native of Boston.” The agency then listed all the colleges, seminaries and special courses the rabbi had attended.
“The man’s got more degrees than a thermometer,” Peikes reported to his executive.
“Perfect,” said Harry Zwicker, the secretary. “Call in the order and request immediate delivery.”
“Mr. Zwicker,” said the president officiously, “we know you run a tobacco shop, but a rabbi is not a carton of cigarettes!” Zelig Peikes, an old-fashioned man, liked to observe certain formalities. He therefore sent a telegram to the agency in Toronto: “Steelton Jewish Community hereby signifies approval of party recommended as its spiritual leader. Stop. Early arrival of said party important to continuing congregational religious functions. Stop. Please acknowledge.” The telegram had come to eleven dollars and sixty cents, and Milt Katzenberg, the treasurer, reminded the president that the message could have been sent using half the words.
“The trouble with you, Mr. Katzenberg,” Zelig Peikes responded with the haughtiness of his office, “is that you have no sense of what looks good in official circles.”
The moment the new rabbi stepped off the airport bus, everyone on the executive committee — Peikes, Zwicker, Katzenberg — wished they’d moved a bit more slowly. In fact, they didn’t at first believe the sight that stood before them.
The young man (he was thirty-one) wore a wide-brimmed black hat so large that his face was scarcely noticeable. A black frock coat with black satin lapels reached well below his knees, reminding the welcoming committee of a bathrobe from some previous century. A black string tie hung limply from his white shirt collar. His feet, too long and too broad for so short a person, were encased in a pair of well-brushed black shoes and white socks, blinding in the midst of so much black.
“My God,” whispered Harry Zwicker.
“Next time the agency can pay for the telegram,” whispered Milt Katzenberg.
The new rabbi, it turned out, was a member of the Lubavitcher sect, an extremely Orthodox group who clothe themselves in the fashion of their Eastern European forefathers and wear their beards long, their sideburns untrimmed.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, a little decorum please!” said Zelig Peikes out of the side of his mouth. He stepped forward and offered his hand. “Welcome to Steelton, Rabbi Teitelman.”
The new rabbi managed a weak smile. “I’m afraid I’m not a very good flyer. Is there a …” He hesitated, glanced in the direction of the bus depot, then fled.
“Marvellous. Wonderful,” said Zwicker, while the committee waited outside. “We ask for a rabbi and they send us a walking sideshow, a black angel that can’t fly.”
“Have faith,” said Milt Katzenberg. “God giveth, God taketh away. When it comes time for God to take him away from us, we’ll do him a favour and buy him a train ticket.”
Zelig Peikes, president of the congregation, said nothing. But the presidency meant a great deal to him. This was his fourth term in office and he wondered whether the hiring of a Lubavitcher rabbi (of all people!) might cost him a fifth.
Peikes’ concern was well-founded, for the shock of meeting the new rabbi was almost too much for the local community, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Never had the townspeople seen anyone outfitted in such a costume, even at the annual Mardi Gras run by the local branch of the Sons of the Holy Society of St. Christopher. Never had the shop windows on the main streets, which the young rabbi passed on his walks, reflected so pale a countenance. Never had the barbers downtown, whose scissors had shorn everything from tearful two-year-olds to lumberjacks fresh from the woods and with a full winter’s growth, seen such long, curly sidelocks, such red hair. Whenever the young Lubavitcher rabbi took to the streets for a breath of air, passing motorists slowed their cars to gawk, children stopped their games to look, merchants and customers halted trade to stare.
Before too many days had passed, the Lubavitcher rabbi — unassuming, unaware, without the slightest intention — had managed to capture the attention of the entire city, much the way a visiting magician or seller of elixirs might have done in horse-and-buggy times.
Minor miracles were attributed to him.
A bank manager claimed that a suspicious-looking pair of strangers, whom he took for bank robbers, turned and fled, unnerved when the black-clad clergyman happened to enter the bank merely to cash his paycheque. Then there was the time when the rabbi, visiting Mrs. Moskover in hospital, bent to scratch his ankle, noticed a loose connection in the adjoining patient’s oxygen line and alerted a nurse just as the unfortunate woman in the plastic tent was turning blue.
Morris Moskover, the Local Sage, also at his wife’s bedside at the time, took a secular view of the incident. “It’s very simple,” said Moskover. “The rabbi had an itch to do good.” But to Father Darcy, the dour chaplain of Sacred Heart, the hand that scratched the ankle was no less than the benevolent hand of God.
And finally there was the day in mid-October when the maple trees in Steelton and the surrounding countryside were at the peak of their autumnal flame, the day before the Day of Atonement. The rabbi had led a handful of the more observant Jews to the banks of the St. Anne River, there to conduct the ancient symbolic rite of jettisoning one’s sins by emptying one’s pockets into the water. Unfortunately, the town’s poorest Jew, Nathan Pripchik, in turning out his trouser pockets, inadvertently deposited his last ten-dollar bill into the river where it was quickly caught in the steady current and began drifting toward a stretch of rapids. Without hesitation the new rabbi leapt into the chilly water, soaking himself to his middle, and retrieved the bill for poor Pripchik.
All the next day the Lubavitcher rabbi heroically led the congregation in its holiest of holy day worship, chanting fervently in his high-pitched nasal tenor, bending his body to and fro in the traditional choreography of Hebrew prayer, alternately perspiring and shivering with a high fever. Still, because of the rule of fasting that governed the Day of Atonement, he resolutely refused water or medication. At sundown, after managing to blow the final blast on a ram’s horn to signal the end of worship, Rabbi Teitelman collapsed, but not before hearing gasps of awe and admiration from many of his flock.
The young Lubavitcher rabbi in old-country garb and redd
ish sidelocks may not have been what the Jewish congregation had bargained for. The exact opposite of Rabbi Kaminsky in so many ways, he was generally serious and reserved. Nevertheless, as Bryna Glick put it after breaking her fast, “The corporal suddenly became a captain!”
Something else happened that the Jews of Steelton hadn’t bargained for. The new rabbi’s presence had now aroused the city’s inquisitiveness about its Jewish population, an inquisitiveness that had slumbered beneath cobwebs, with everyone’s blessing, for years.
The current generation of Jews, many of whom stood behind the very counters where their fathers had done business, or in the very kitchens where their mothers had baked loaves of challah for the Sabbath, lived unobtrusive lives. If Steelton were compared to a house, the foundation stones would be Anglo-Saxon, the bricks French, the mortar Italian, Slav and Scandinavian. The small community of Jews was hinged to the structure like a window shutter, with the light passing right through. Most of the townspeople knew the Jews were there, knew that they paid their taxes, voted on election days, helped sponsor the local amateur hockey team, bought apples from the Boy Scouts and cookies from the Girl Guides, entered their kids in the music festival. But beyond those civic activities, what?
Suddenly, unexpectedly, there was an air of curiosity, and the Jewish community felt itself magnified, trapped under a gigantic microscope, scrutinized day and night. Out of the blue, neighbours who had formerly minded their own business or simply been indifferent, were asking polite but pointed questions.
Suddenly, the Jews of Steelton felt accountable.
Amos Kerkorian, a corner grocer still popular with many of the old-time Jews, wondered how the young rabbi managed to exist on such a restricted diet. “The old rabbi used to buy all sorts of things here,” he said. “Fish, cheese, breakfast cereal, frozen juice, even chocolate and candies once in a while. But this new fella, all he ever buys is eggs and more eggs and a little fresh fruit and vegetables, just about enough to feed a bird. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. Beats me.”
“It’s because we have strict laws about food,” Sarah Glick, one of Mr. Kerkorian’s regular customers, reminded him. “It’s called ‘keeping kosher.’”
“Yes, yes, I know all about that,” Kerkorian said, “but how is it that so many of you are steady patrons of Hong Ling’s China Palace?” Hong Ling’s was the best of several Chinese restaurants in Steelton. On Sunday nights especially, local Occidentals, many of them Jews, lined up to eat homemade Oriental dishes — sweet-and-sour shrimp, egg rolls, chow mein — foods Sarah Glick’s Orthodox ancestors in Eastern Europe wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot chopstick.
“Well,” said Sarah Glick, pretending to be indignant, “you don’t expect us to eat at the place next door, do you?” She was referring to a fried-chicken franchise, a gaudy red-and- white shop that exhaled an overwhelming odour of burning french fries around the clock. “After all,” she added, “we Jews invented chicken.”
When Maximilian Glick’s mother related this conversation to her circle of friends at the synagogue Ladies’ Auxiliary, no one but she saw the humour in it. From that time on, Hong Ling’s Jewish customers made a practice of avoiding Sunday nights at the Chinese restaurant. And even on other nights of the week, when the Arborite tables and padded vinyl booths were otherwise empty, the Jews huddled over their platters of barbecued spareribs self-consciously, as if all eyes, including the eyes of their Cantonese host, were upon them.
The manager of the hardware store next to A. Glick & Son, Cal Irwin, over morning coffee and donuts in the nearby bakery, wondered aloud why, for the first time in his memory (which went back many years), so many Jewish shops were closed on Saturday mornings. “I guess the rumour’s true, eh, Henry?” Cal Irwin said to Henry Glick.
“What rumour, Cal?”
“That you’re goin’ to Sabbath services ’cause ol’ Redbeard has put the fear of the Lord into you folks. And here I thought the only person in the world you were afraid of was your wife.”
Determined to be a good sport, Henry Glick laughed. Inwardly, however, it was a different story. For the first time in Henry Glick’s memory (which also went back many years) he was beginning to feel like a sore thumb.
Minor tremors of discontentment began to rumble through the small Jewish community. Unfortunately the rabbi, still unaware, did nothing to diminish them.
To make matters worse, there was the sermon he chose to preach for some unexplained reason during the Chanukah festival of good cheer and gift-giving that fell early that December. Rabbi Kaminsky would have recited a passage of scripture, a psalm or two, and led the audience in singing Hebrew songs of rejoicing in his resolute baritone. Rabbi Teitelman, however, took the occasion to deliver a fiery message about, of all things, Evil. The dais from which he spoke, at the centre of the modest sanctuary, was raised from the floor by only two or three steps. But the Lubavitcher’s words cascaded down upon his listeners like a magistrate’s verdict. Vanity, Greed, Lust, Hypocrisy — all these human failings were spread before them like a catalogue of sins, inviting admissions of guilt.
“Was he talking about us?” old Augustus Glick asked afterward, his disbelief bordering on outrage.
Zelig Peikes was reassuring. “Relax, Mr. Glick. He was really talking about the congregation in Nickel City.”
But Augustus Glick was not reassured. “Zelig, my friend,” he said in a fatherly tone, “you do want to be president of this congregation for a fifth term, don’t you?”
Peikes said nothing, but the words “I do, I do!” hovered around his lips as if he were an eager groom at a wedding.
“Then, Zelig, my friend,” said the old man, “go to Rabbi Teitelman and tell him, in a nice way, mind you, that he’s got a lot to learn.”
Others nodded in solemn agreement.
A few days later Peikes met with the young Lubavitcher rabbi.
“Rabbi,” he began slowly, deferentially, “we appreciate that you are reviving customs and reminding us of certain obligations that have … shall we say … gone by the way over the years. But do you think you are making life any easier for us Jews?”
“Since when has life ever been easy for Jews?” asked the rabbi.
Peikes gave the rabbi’s reply a moment’s thought. “Rabbi, I know you mean well, but do you think our people will be satisfied with such an answer?”
The rabbi, too, paused to reflect. Then he smiled. “When have our people ever been satisfied with answers?”
Always a question answered by a question; this was an old-fashioned form of debate among Jews. Peikes knew he must alter the pattern of dialogue between the rabbi and himself, otherwise he would return to Augustus Glick and his supporters empty-handed. “I hope you will forgive a direct statement. Rabbi Kaminsky, may he rest in peace, was a devout Jew like yourself. But he made allowances. What I mean is, there were certain realities of life here that he understood.”
“I was never fortunate enough to know my predecessor,” replied the new rabbi, “but the reason he rests in peace is that he did not understand every reality. Like the rules of traffic, for instance.” The rabbi shrugged. “But then, who does?”
Zelig Peikes returned to his followers. “Well, Peikes,” they demanded, “what news?”
Gloom darkening his face, Peikes extended his hands toward them, palms up, empty.
And so the discontent festered and grew and the Jewish congregation became less and less happy by the day with their young rabbi, with his effect on Steelton and on their lives.
But no one among them was less happy with the Lubavitcher rabbi than his new pupil — Maximilian Glick.
Eight
Maximilian’s unhappiness with Kalman Teitelman began the moment he showed up at the new rabbi’s doorstep for his first bar mitzvah lesson. “Don’t worry, Maxie,” his mother had assured him, “everybody dislikes or distrusts what they’re not familiar with. You’ll get over it very soon, I’m sure.”
But it was more than
dislike or distrust in Max’s case. It was the feeling in the pit of his stomach when this strangest of strangers opened his apartment door, less a fear of what lay ahead than a deep longing for what was gone, gone forever.
Even as the Lubavitcher held out a hand in greeting and said “Hello,” the friendly image of Rabbi Kaminsky flashed before the boy’s eyes, and he found himself wishing, if only … if only. A whole new beginning, thought Max. I don’t know him, he doesn’t know me. To the boy, the distance between the two personalities, his own and the rabbi’s, was a boundless expanse of untraceable rivers and uncharted shorelines. One had only to look at the man to understand this!
There had been little time since he’d arrived for Rabbi Teitelman to be briefed on the seventy-five or eighty individuals who made up his congregation. Though Zelig Peikes had furnished him, that first day, with a hastily typed membership list together with a capsule commentary on the local Who’s Who, the children of the community were listed separately with nothing revealed beyond their names and dates of birth. Those simple statistics were all Rabbi Teitelman had learned thus far about his new pupil.
As for what the pupil knew about his teacher, less could be said, for whatever initial impressions Max’s family had gained they chose to exchange among themselves in Yiddish.
The boy’s eyes now took in the rabbi’s small apartment with a single quick sweep. It was located downtown, in the unfashionable district close to the synagogue, in keeping with Rabbi Teitelman’s request, in one of a row of rundown frame houses whose front lawns, no larger than postage stamps, were littered with tricycles, baby carriages and toys, all of which had seen better days. The inside of the apartment reminded Max of a cell, so sparse were its furnishings: an old oak desk, a bookcase, a couple of folding wooden chairs, a rocking chair that Max figured must have been sat in by Noah while waiting for the floodwaters to recede. A couple of gooseneck reading lamps provided the only lighting. There were no drapes, only thin curtains, but there was something rectangular on the floor, a rug with splotches of pattern here and there, a stubborn reminder that it had once upon a time been a genuine Persian carpet.
The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick Page 7
