Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry

by Harry Kemelman

  “Old man Goralsky will provide it. I’m sure of it. I’ve spoken to him; I’ve described and explained my design, and he likes the idea.”

  “And do we really need it?”

  “How can you talk that way, Rabbi? It isn’t a matter of mere need. This is a thing of the spirit. For a community to build an edifice like this is an act of religious dedica­tion. Visit the great cathedrals of Europe and ask yourself how many were actually needed. Ethel and I went to Eu­rope last summer with the Wolffs. Took the grand tour, and believe you me it was an eye-opener. And you know what really got me—me a believing Jew and president of a temple, at that? The churches, the cathedrals! And not just because of the architecture, although naturally that interested me. It was something else. You’d come into some church like Santa Croce in Firenze—that’s Flo­rence—and on the walls there are Giotto frescoes, and the ceilings are painted beams, and the walls are lined with tombs of famous artists and scientists—Michelangelo, Rossini, Galileo—Charlie Wolff said to me, and he’s only a dress manufacturer, ‘Mort, that was to me a religious ex­perience.’ And I felt the same way. And Ethel did too, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, I did, Rabbi. I felt—how shall I put it—spiritually uplifted.”

  “So I thought, why them and not us? Why can’t we—why can’t I—build a temple that will give our people some of that same feeling, that same uplift, as Ethel says? That’s something that’s been missing in our temples. The old ones are nothing and the new ones are like Soren­son’s phony designs.”

  “Sometimes,” the rabbi said slowly, “we tend to confuse aesthetic with religious experiences.”

  “I’m afraid, Ethel,” said Schwarz with a bitter smile, “our rabbi is not too enthusiastic about our project.”

  The rabbi colored. “It would be hypocritical of me if I were to say I had no interest in the appearance and size of the synagogue where I was serving. The physical plant is a rough indication of the size and importance of the community, and naturally as a young man not without ambition I prefer to be associated with a large, growing, vigorous community rather than one on the decline. When friends of mine, former classmates at the seminary, come to visit me, I am not unmindful of their apprecia­tion of our synagogue with all that implies. But size for the sake of size? When there is no need? Not even in the foreseeable future? Barnard’s Crossing is a small commu­nity, and even at Kol Nidre, when temples and syna­gogues are traditionally crowded, we have empty seats. And that is only one night in the year.

  “That you want to perform an act of spititual dedica­tion does you great credit, Mr. Schwarz, but it is only fair to point out that what you propose is not in the general direction of our tradition. Those churches, full of mar­velous statues and paintings—to the worshipers they are holy. The buildings themselves are holy. The ground on which they stand is hallowed ground. But this is not our way. We are subject to the commandment, Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image. Our synagogues and temples—the piles of masonry, I mean—are not in themselves holy, only the words that are said there. For a long time, we got along very well housing the Ark of the Lord in only a tent.”

  “I’m not interested in sermons, Rabbi,” said Schwarz coldly. “Are you trying to tell me that you plan to tout Goralsky off the project?”

  “I certainly have no intention of seeking him out, but if he were to ask my opinion I would have to be candid with him.”

  “You’d say you were opposed to it?”

  The rabbi temporized. “It would depend on what he asked.”

  “And what do you mean by that?”

  “If he were to ask if I had any objection to the new chapel I would tell him, of course, that adding it to the main structure is not contrary to either our doctrine or our tradition.” He shrugged. “If, however, he were to ask if I thought it necessary, I could not in all conscience say I did. And if he were to ask if I thought it was a worthy project, a worthy use of the money, I would have to tell him that I could think of dozens of uses to which the money could be better put.”

  “Of all the smug, sanctimonious!—” Schwarz shook his head angrily. “You know, that’s what comes of giving a man too much security. When they first proposed giving him a five-year contract, I opposed it, and by God I knew what I was doing.”

  “He doesn’t mince words, our rabbi,” said Ethel as she loaded the dishwasher. “What I don’t understand is that it’s all meant for him. I mean, that sanctuary would really be his—I’d think he’d like his own chapel instead of the public auditorium.”

  “That’s just the point. In a sense I was doing it for him. At least, he’s the one who will benefit most from it. Why wouldn’t he want it? I’ll tell you why—it’s just to defy me. There can’t be any other reason.”

  “Well, I don’t know what he had in mind, but it seems pretty bad manners on his part. I mean, as our guest, the least he could have done was say it was nice. Even if he didn’t like it, he could have been sort of noncommittal.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you. That’s just my point. He went out of his way to be unnecessarily unpleasant. And that can only mean that he was opposing me on personal grounds. Maybe he’s sore about my voting against him on the new contract, and is trying to get back at me.”

  “Do you think he’ll talk to Goralsky about it?”

  “He’d better not, that’s all I can say. He’d better not. Because if he does, then contract or no contract, this place will be too hot to hold him.”

  “It wouldn’t have hurt to show some enthusiasm, David. He was trying so hard to be nice and friendly, the least you could have done was to compliment him on the design.”

  “Honestly, Miriam, I tried, but the words stuck in my throat. I kept thinking how ridiculous the temple would look with that what did he call it? rich, simple, elegant, classic monstrosity along with his schmoosing gallery, and the words wouldn’t come out. Sorenson’s design may not be much, but it is simple and it has an austere grace that Schwarz wants to spoil just so he can show he can build something besides a supermarket. We need a chapel about as much as we need a bowling alley. We don’t need the extra space. And when the sanctuary is used for sec­ular purposes, there’s no reason we can’t put a simple screen in front of the Ark as they do in other synagogues. Don’t you see, he wasn’t interested in improving the tem­ple—only in advertising himself.”

  “All I see is that he was trying to be friendly, and you turned him down.”

  “I couldn’t buy his friendship on that basis. I don’t think for a moment that Goralsky would ask my opinion, but if he did I couldn’t give him a false impresson just to curry favor with Schwarz.” He could see she was still un­convinced. “Look, Miriam, as the rabbi of the congrega­tion, a sort of public figure, I have to be nice to all kinds of people. I have to pretend an interest in things that truthfully don’t interest me at all. I have to busy myself with matters that aren’t worth the time I spend on them. And I do it. No matter how much I resent it, I do it. I do it because in some small way, they help the congregation or the community. But if I gushed all over Schwarz about how wonderful his design was, and how wonderful it would be for the congregation to have a little jewel of a chapel which could never be profaned by anything mun­dane or secular, and if I assured him that I would back him to the hilt in dealing with Goralsky, then I’d be doing it just to get in good with him, to make my job more se­cure, and that I couldn’t do.”

  “I don’t think the design is really so bad,” she said tentatively.

  “By itself, no. It’s a little fancy for my taste, but well within the range of acceptability if it stood alone. But when you slap it up against the wall of our present structure, don’t you see what the effect would be? The two buildings don’t blend. They clash. And because our present structure is simple with clean lines, and the proposed building is ornate and fancy, he’s hoping that peo­ple will make the comparison. What he’s saying in effect is, ‘See what you would have got if you had engaged
me originally.’ ”

  Still she did not answer. Her silence made him uncom­fortable. “What is it, Miriam? What’s troubling you? Are you worried about what Schwarz can do?”

  “Oh, David, you know I’ve gone along with you in every important decision. After you got your degree, when you turned down that job in Chicago that paid so much money because you didn’t like the kind of congre­gation it seemed to be, I didn’t say a word although we were living on my salary as a typist—that and whatever occasional fees you got as a fill-in rabbi for the High Holy Days in small towns. And then there was the job at a good salary down in Louisiana that was the right kind of congregation but which you refused because you felt you couldn’t serve effectively in the South. Then there was the job as assistant rabbi in that Cleveland temple that paid more than most full rabbi jobs, but you said you didn’t want to serve under someone else and have to sub-ordinate your own thinking to his. It was near the end of the hiring season, and you yourself felt that Hanslick was getting tired of offering you jobs you kept turning down. And it was I who urged you to turn it down; I told you I didn’t mind continuing my job and that I loved our little one-room basement apartment that was so cold in the winter and hot in the summer, and doing all the shopping and the cooking—”

  “I did some of the shopping and the cooking,” he protested.

  “But when you did it, the clerks always gave you the worst—the vegetables that were just starting to rot—and the butcher, that kosher butcher on the corner—I’ll bet his eyes lit up when he saw you come in—all the fat and bones and gristle, and you couldn’t even remember to take off the roast until it started to burn—” She began to laugh. “Do you remember that time when you started to cut away the burnt part and I said I liked meat well done, and you said you could eat any kind of meat but you couldn’t stand a liar, and you went out and bought some delicatessen?”

  “Yes”—and he, too, started laughing—“and remember the time—” He broke off. “But what are you getting at?”

  “Just that in those days it didn’t make any difference.”

  “And now is it different? Since living in Barnard’s Crossing, have I been buying two-hundred-dollar suits and alligator shoes?”

  “You need a new suit, and the collars on half your shirts are frayed—”

  “Stick to the point, woman,” he cried in exasperation.

  “The point is, that was all right when there were just two of us. But I’m carrying a child and I feel responsible for it.”

  “For him, and I’m responsible. Are you worried that I might lose my job and not be able to make a living for my wife and child? Don’t worry. As long as we haven’t developed a taste for luxury, then if not this job, another. And if not another pulpit, then a teaching job. And if I can’t get that, then a job as a bookkeeper in an office, or a clerk in a store. These days there’s always some job for a man who is willing to work. Remember, a rabbi doesn’t have to have a pulpit to be a rabbi. Traditionally, we don’t even approve of being paid for one’s learning. ‘One should use the Torah as a spade to dig with.’ But don’t think that I haven’t thought about it.

  “I’m aware of my responsibilities. And I’m aware of the added burden that will fall on our child as a rabbi’s son. I am a rabbi’s son and I know what it means. Because your father is a public figure, everyone expects more of you, and you feel guilty when you don’t come up to expectations. As a youngster, you can’t imagine how often I wished my father owned a shoe store or went to work in an office like the fathers of the other boys. Be­lieve me, I envied the boys whose fathers earned a living in the ordinary way. But there were compensations, and much of it was fun. When I went to the synagogue on a Friday night with my mother, and I saw my father in the pulpit conducting the service, delivering his sermons, I always felt that the synagogue was ours, that I was being taken there as other boys were occasionally taken to their father’s offices on Saturday.

  “But when I got a little older and would overhear, and partly understand, the talk of men such as Schwarz—and don’t think my father didn’t have his Schwarzes—every rabbi does—then it wasn’t so pleasant. A rabbi is a public servant, and anyone who has many masters can’t expect to please them all. Once I asked my father about something I overheard—some controversy he was having with the members of his synagogue at the time—and he smiled at me and said, ‘In this life you sometimes have to choose between pleasing God and pleasing man. And in the long run, it’s better to please God—He’s more apt to remember.’ After that, I wasn’t bothered so much. Whenever I heard an uncomplimentary remark about my father, I figured he had chosen to please God again.”

  “Oh, David, I don’t want you to do anything you think is wrong. Only—” she looked up at him—“please could we please God after the baby is born?”

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Precisely at noon the next day a cab pulled up to the door and out stepped a slim, boyish-looking man in his early forties. Dr. Ronald Sykes had a long narrow face with thinning dark hair; it was an intelligent face with shrewd knowing eyes and a ready smile. He was wearing stout English boots, gray flannels, and a tweed jacket. If the hair had been a little thicker, the face a little fuller, and the eyes somewhat less knowing, he could have passed for an undergraduate.

  “I came to see you in behalf of my late friend and col­league, Isaac Hirsh,” he said when they were seated in the rabbi’s study. “You heard of his death, of course.”

  “I don’t believe I knew an Isaac Hirsh,” the rabbi said with a tinge of embarrassment. “He wasn’t a member of my congregation, was he?”

  “No, Rabbi, but he did live here and was part of the Jewish community, so I thought you might know him.”

  The rabbi shook his head slowly.

  “Well, he died Friday night, and his wife, or rather his widow, would like to arrange for him to have a Jewish fu­neral. Is that possible—I mean where he was not a mem­ber of your congregation?”

  “Oh, yes. Although our cemetery is reserved for members of the congregation, we make provision for Jews in the community who are not members. Upon paying a small fee they are accorded nominal membership, which of course is exclusive of the price of a lot. However, as a resident of Barnard’s Crossing, Mr. Hirsh can be buried in the town cemetery, Grove Hill, which is nonsectarian. I don’t know what fees would be in­volved, but I could give him Jewish burial there just as well.”

  The doctor shook his head. “No, I think Mrs. Hirsh would want him buried among his own kind. Mrs. Hirsh is not Jewish.”

  “Oh.”

  “Does that make a difference?” Sykes asked quickly.

  “It might.” The rabbi hesitated. “In that case, I’d have to be sure that the deceased had in fact been a Jew—that is, had remained a Jew.”

  “I’m not sure I understand. His wife considers him a Jew. As long as I knew him, which is only this past year, to be sure, he never pretended to be anything else.”

  The rabbi smiled. “It’s a religious rather than an ethnic distinction. Anyone born of a Jewish mother, not father if you please, is automatically considered Jewish, pro­vided”—he paused to emphasize the point—“that he has not repudiated his religion by conversion to another reli­gion or by public disclaimer.”

  “To the best of my knowledge he belonged to no other church.”

  “But you said Mrs. Hirsh was not Jewish. Was she Catholic or Protestant?”

  “I don’t know. Anglican, I think, originally. At least the Anglican minister came to pay his respects while I was there.”

  “Well, you see how it is. If they had come to me and asked me to marry them, I would have refused unless she converted. So perhaps the late Mr. Hirsh was converted when they were married. Tell me, why didn’t Mrs. Hirsh come, or send for me herself?”

  “The shock of her husband’s death, Rabbi. As a matter of fact, she’s been kept under mild sedation. So as his section head, his boss you might say, she naturally turned to me
to make the arrangements. And as for his religious status, I can only say I very much doubt if he would have undergone even nominal conversion to marry. He never cared much for all this mumbo jumbo—” he checked himself. “I’m sorry, rabbi, but those were his words; I was quoting him.” He had a sudden thought. “His name, Isaac, is essentially Jewish. He didn’t change that, so wouldn’t that indicate how he felt?”

  The rabbi smiled. “You must have noticed when Mrs. Small opened the door that we are expecting a child. So our interest in names is more than just academic. We were just talking about that and decided the name Isaac, these days, is as likely to be pure Yankee.”

  Sykes spread his hands in token of defeat. “Well, all I can say is that I feel he had no religious affiliations. Poor devil, he would have been better off if he had. He might have been alive today if he like the rest of the Jews had gone to temple Friday night.”

  “Then his death was unexpected?”

  “He was found dead in his garage Friday night. Patri­cia Hirsh notified me the next day, and I came right over.”

  “Heart attack?”

  “Carbon monoxide poisoning.”

  “Oh.” The rabbi, who had been lounging back in his chair, now leaned forward. His face became thoughtful and his fingers drummed a soft tattoo on the desk.

  “You’re thinking of suicide, Rabbi? Would that make a difference?”

  “It might.”

  “I suppose it could be suicide,” said Sykes slowly, “al­though there was no note, and if he were going to take his own life, you’d think he’d have left some word for his wife. He was very fond of her. The police officially called it accidental death. You see, he had been drinking heavily—”

  “You mean he was drunk?”

  “Must have been. He had gone through half a bottle of vodka, about a pint, in a pretty short time. He probably blacked out, and the motor kept running.”

  “He was a heavy drinker?”