“We’re planning all those things, but wasn’t it decided we would make all the improvements out of income?”
“Sure, but you’ve got to spend a little money to make some money. Remember, it’s the packaging that sells the product.”
“Well, you’ve got a budget of two thousand dollars.”
“Yeah, and how far will that take you? Just keeping the grass cut and paying for a part-time caretaker eats that up.”
“So what do you want, twenty-five thousand dollars for a regular Forest Lawn so you can sell a couple of lots for a hundred and fifty bucks?”
“I don’t think that’s fair to Marve,” said Schwarz.
“I’ll tell you what I want: I want enough money to build a decent road. Then I can sell lots in any part of the cemetery, not just near the corner where there’s a hole in the fence. To take care of that we’ve worked out a scheme that’s both practical and economical. What we’re planning is a circular road. That will give us access to all parts of the cemetery. What I want is for our budget to be increased to at least five thousand dollars so we can go ahead. We could lay out the whole road and get bids on what it would cost to pave it. Then if the low bid goes above the five grand, and I don’t think it will, I’d expect the Board to pick up the tab. And that’s my motion.”
The secretary looked up from hastily scribbled notes. “A motion was made—did anybody second it?”
“Second the motion.”
“Sure, I’ll second it.”
“All right. A motion was made and seconded that the Cemetery Committee budget be increased to five thousand dollars for the purpose of building a road—”
“Make that a circular road.”
“All right—a circular road within the boundaries of the cemetery, any excess monies that are necessary to be . . .”
Morton Schwarz sought out Marvin Brown after the meeting. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Marve, you certainly put that over. I thought you were all set to hand in your resignation.”
Marve grinned. “It’s just a selling job as I see it.”
“Well, you certainly got the technique. And you sure worked in our theme song.” He chuckled. “I’d like to see the rabbi buck this setup.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
As the founder and first president of the congregation, Jacob Wasserman was considered the elder statesman of the temple. In his sixties, he was quite a bit older than most of the members. He had worked almost single-handed to get the organization started, spending his evenings going to see each of the fifty or so Jewish families that comprised the Jewish community in Barnard’s Crossing shortly after the end of World War II. The first High Holy Day services had been held in the basement of his house with a Torah Scroll borrowed from one of the Lynn synagogues, and he had led the prayers and chanted the portions from the Torah.
Al Becker, who succeeded him as president, accompanied him on his visit to the rabbi. Becker was a short, stocky man with a deep gravelly voice and a belligerent way of using it. Although he had none of Wasserman’s learning, to say nothing of his understanding of Jewish tradition, he followed him faithfully and usually voted with him on most Board matters.
“It’s lucky Becker and I decided to drop in on you, Rabbi, to see how you were getting along,” said Wasserman. “I knew old man Goralsky was an ignoramus, but that his son, a boy born and brought up in America, should be such a superstitious idiot, too—this I wouldn’t have believed.”
“Just a minute, Jacob,” said Becker. “Right is right. How can you say the old man is an ignoramus? A man like that with a beard—he says the prayers faster than anyone in the congregation and most of the time he doesn’t even bother to look at the book.”
“Please, Becker, stick to things you know about. Goralsky may pray faster than anybody in the congregation and he knows the prayers by heart. Why not? He’s been saying them every day morning and night for almost eighty years. But he doesn’t know the meaning of them.”
“You mean he doesn’t understand what he’s saying?”
“Do you, when you recite the prayers in Hebrew?”
“To tell the truth, most of the time I use the English side.”
“So that’s an advantage that you have over him. But the question is what are we going to do now?”
Becker shook his head dolefully. “Too bad you had to get sick, Rabbi. If you had been at the meeting yesterday when the discussion came up, you could have explained what the real issue was—”
“I’m not sure I could have, from the way you report it,” said Rabbi Small. “As I gather, the motion was a general one—to give the Cemetery Committee a budget to improve the grounds. In general I think that’s a good idea, so under the circumstances I’d be unlikely to rise and accuse Marvin Brown and your president of ulterior motives.”
“Of course not,” said Wasserman. “It would have been unseemly for the rabbi. It would be like calling Schwarz a liar. And even if he had, and the whole business had come out into the open, what good would it have done? After Schwarz got through explaining, do you doubt that the majority of the Board would have voted with him? Building a road which might affect the grave of an outsider against a building worth a hundred thousand dollars or more?”
“I cannot permit the desecration of the grave of a Jew by fellow Jews,” said the rabbi quietly.
“But what can you do about it, Rabbi?” said Becker. “You’ve got to be reasonable. The road has already been voted, so it’s no longer a simple question of being fair to this guy Hirsh. Now it’s a question of who is to set policy for the congregation, you or the Board.”
“Not quite, Mr. Becker,” said the rabbi. “In this matter, my authority is supreme.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you there, Rabbi.”
“It’s simple enough. Although it is customary to speak of the rabbi as an employee of the congregation, it is a mistake to equate him with other employees. My position here is more like that of the CPA who is engaged to audit the books than that of Stanley Doble who is hired to maintain the building and grounds. I am not a tool of the congregation to be used any way they see fit. I cannot be asked to do something that runs counter to the principles of my profession any more than you can ask a CPA to cover up some discrepancy in the books. The CPA has loyalties to the entire business community that transcend his loyalties to the person who engages him. In the same manner my loyalties cannot be commanded completely. Transcending my loyalties to this congregation are my loyalties to the Jewish tradition, to the Jews of the past, and to Jews as yet unborn. In certain areas, and this is one, my authority is supreme and not subject to question by the congregation.”
“But—”
“A widow comes to me,” the rabbi went on impatiently, “and asks to have her late husband buried in a Jewish cemetery according to Jewish custom. It is for me to determine if he is a Jew, and I decided he was. Again, it is for me, and only for me, to determine if his manner of death warrants burial according to Jewish rites. If there is the suspicion of suicide it is for me, and only for me, to decide how much weight to give the evidence, how much to allow for mitigating circumstances, and then to decide how rigidly to apply the regulations that govern burial of a suicide. These are not congregational matters; these are purely rabbinic.”
“Well, if you put it that way—”
“Now, having made my decision, I referred the widow, or her representative, to the chairman of the Cemetery Committee. Mr. Brown, as the voice of the congregation in this matter, sold the widow a lot in good faith and accepted her money. If the congregation had a regulation limiting the cemetery only to members, and on those grounds had refused to bury Hirsh, I might have considered the regulation harsh or ill-advised but there I would have no authority—only what influence I could bring to bear. But the regulations made special provisions for a case like this. It called for the payment of a fee which conferred nominal membership. And this fee was paid and accepted.”
“No question.”
“Once having made Hirsh a nominal member of the congregation in accordance with the regulations they themselves made up, they then have to treat his burial exactly as they would any other member’s.”
“That’s not only in the bylaws, but it’s in accordance with our tradition,” said Wasserman.
“Now, suppose sometime later evidence is adduced, incontrovertible evidence, that Hirsh had actually committed suicide—and such is not the case—then once again it becomes a decision entirely for me, and me alone, whether his presence compromises the cemetery. And if I were to decide that it did, it would be up to me, and me alone, to decide what measures of purification were necessary. But the Board chooses to follow Mr. Goralsky in this matter. Why? Is his smicha greater than mine? Did he perhaps receive his from the Vilna Gaon?”
The rabbi’s voice had risen, and his normally pale face showed the heat of his indignation. He sat back in his chair and smiled, a small, deprecatory smile. “I told Mr. Schwarz and Mr. Brown that I would forbid this desecration of Hirsh’s grave. Of course, in the present congregation-rabbi relationship, my ban has no force behind it. So when Mr. Brown called to say that the committee was going ahead anyway, I did the only thing I could do: I sent in my resignation.”
“You resigned!” Wasserman was aghast.
“You mean already, you’ve already sent it in?” said Becker.
The rabbi nodded. “When Brown hung up, I wrote out my resignation and dropped it in the mailbox.”
“But why, Rabbi, why?” Becker pleaded.
“I’ve just explained that.”
Wasserman was upset. “You could have called me. You could have discussed it with me, explained your position. I could have talked to Schwarz. I could have brought the matter up before the Board. I could—”
“How could I do that? This was between Brown and Schwarz and me. Could I come running to you to help me exercise my authority? Besides, what good would it have done? You would have split the congregation, and in the end the Board would have voted with Schwarz. As you yourself said, given the choice between an unknown’s corpse and a hundred-thousand-dollar building, is there any question which way the Board would vote?”
“And how does Mrs. Small feel about this?” asked Wasserman.
“Just a minute, Jacob,” interrupted Becker. “You say you sent this letter out Friday morning? So it must have been received no later than Saturday. If it was addressed to the president of the temple it would have been put in with the rest of the temple mail, and the corresponding secretary would have got it and showed it to Mort Schwarz. So why didn’t Schwarz have it read at the meeting?”
“That’s a good question, Becker.”
“It must mean that Schwarz just isn’t accepting it.”
“That could be,” said Wasserman slowly, “but I don’t think so.”
“You think he wanted to discuss it with the rabbi first?”
“That could also be, but I doubt it.”
“So how do you figure it?”
“I think he wants to talk it over with his group on the Board first, and get them all to agree. Then when he brings up the matter in the meeting, they’ll railroad it through just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“But why, Jacob? You think he wants the rabbi out?”
“I don’t think he’ll let anything interfere with his new building.”
“Why is the building so important to him? We don’t really need it.”
“Because it’s a building, that’s why. It’s that progress they were talking about. It’s something he can point to, something solid and substantial. It’s a hundred- to a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar property. It’s a value that he can say he brought into the temple organization. Now the present building came in during my administration.”
“I didn’t put up any buildings,” said Becker.
“The cemetery—that you bought. When they put up the central gate, your name will be on it. Schwarz wants something he can say, ‘This is what I did.’ What do you say, Rabbi?”
The rabbi, who had promised to say nothing about Schwarz’s personal involvement, nodded slowly. “Yes, I think it might be something like that.”
“Well, Rabbi,” said Wasserman, “it’s not going to be easy, but we’ll try our best.”
* * *
Outside, Becker said, “What really gets me is why he didn’t get in touch with us. We’re his friends, and we’re not the only ones. And he sure went out of his way to help me that time my partner Mel Bronstein was in all that bad trouble. So I, for one, sure owe him one mighty big favor. “You know, the rabbi has changed in the few years he’s been here. I remember when he first came, he was so shy you could hardly hear him when he spoke. Now he lays it on the line like he’s in complete control of the situation.”
“That’s because he’s grown; he’s matured,” Wasserman said. “When he came here, he was fresh out of the seminary, a boy. He had ideas, and he was firm about them, but he said them so quietly no one really paid attention. But in these few years he’s got confidence, and he doesn’t mind asserting himself. I tell you, Becker, he’s got like a radar beam in his head.”
“What do you mean, radar beam?”
“It’s like the way an airplane flies at night. He’s got an instrument, the pilot, and it’s as if he’s flying an invisible line. The minute he goes off to one side or the other, the instrument gives out a beep. It’s like that with the rabbi. He’s got in his head the principles of the Jewish tradition. When the congregation goes off to one side or the other, the rabbi gets a warning, like a beep, and he knows we’re making a mistake.”
“Yeah, well, this time that beep may cause a crash landing.”
“Why?”
“Because the poor bugger is apt to lose his job. And his wife’s going to have a baby soon.”
“You might at least have told me,” said Miriam. “It was all I could do to restrain myself from coming in when I heard you tell Mr. Wasserman and Mr. Becker. I noticed when one of them asked how I felt about it, you were careful not to answer. Evidently they thought it was my concern.”
“I’m sorry, Miriam dear. It was foolish of me; I was wrong, but I didn’t want to distress you at this time. I thought that by today, by this morning, the whole affair would have been properly settled. It didn’t occur to me that Schwarz would suppress my letter.”
“And suppose he had read your letter and the Board had gone along with him?”
“I didn’t think they would have—not with me there to explain it.” He had been talking apologetically, but now his tone changed. “If they did, then I would have no choice but to resign. I could not remain here. The issue, as far as I’m concerned, is basic and fundamental. Either we are a religious group, a congregation, or we are nothing and I have no job here.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
He shrugged. “What can I do now? The matter is out of my hands. We can only hope that Wasserman and Becker can rally enough support—”
“You mean you’re going to sit with your hands folded and wait until the matter is resolved one way or the other?”
“What do you suggest?” He was nettled.
“You called this desecrating a grave. Very well, then you can appeal to the town authorities. You could talk to Mrs. Hirsh.”
He shook his head. “I could never do that. I am still an employee of the congregation, and if their elected representatives want to do something I disapprove of, I can’t protest to authorities outside.”
“It seems to me,” she said tartly, “that you’re a lot more concerned with your struggle with the Board than you are with Hirsh. You’ve dissociated yourself from their action, but if as you say it’s the desecration that really concerns you, what are you doing to prevent it?”
“Well—”
“The least you could do is prove what really happened.”
“Yes? And how would I go about that?”
“Yes, but not finding it proves nothing. It’s negative evidence.”
“It seems to me that if you can prove something took place, you ought to be able to prove it didn’t.”
He realized that her fine scorn for logic was because she was hurt he had not confided in her. “But don’t you see,” he said patiently, “that simply because you can prove one thing doesn’t mean—”
“All I know is that if someone has done something, someone else ought to be able to find out what it was. Besides, there’s the widow to think of. There’s been a man around town, an investigator for the insurance company, and Mrs. Marcus—you remember she called—was saying that her friend Mrs. Hirsh was worried about losing the insurance money if he proves it’s suicide.”
“He can’t prove it’s suicide any more than we can prove it was an accident.”
“Yes, but he could make her a lot of trouble—hold up the money indefinitely. David, you’ve got to do something.”
“But how, woman, how?”
“I don’t know. You’re the rabbi. That’s your department. At least, you could try.”
He looked at her for a moment. Her face was intense. “All right, Miriam, I’ll try. I’ll call Lanigan and see if he’ll go over the facts with me. It’s just possible we can come up with something.”
“I’ll do better than that,” said the police chief when the rabbi got him on the phone. “I hear you’ve been under the weather, so instead of your coming down to my office tomorrow, I’ll get the files on the case and bring them over to your house tonight.”
Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry Page 13
