Rabbi Gabrielle Commits a Felony

by Roger Herst

  "I had no idea that these scrolls were tattooed," Gabby exclaimed in apparent embarrassment. In the course of using Ohav Shalom's Holocaust scroll, she had often referred to its historic nature, but never that it was numbered. "I wonder if our Torah was also tattooed."

  Carey was surprised that fellow Bar and Bat Mitzvah kids at Ohav Shalom knew a fact about the scroll that she didn't. "It was," she whispered, following the custom of many visitors who felt the need to approach the Holocaust material with silent respect. "My portion was v'yikra. Other kids were practicing different portions; consequently, we were always rolling and re-rolling the scroll. You know how hard it is to find a passage without chapter headings or verse numbers. V'yikra is easy because it's the beginning of Leviticus and there's a large space separating it from the Book of Exodus. But some kids had trouble finding their portions, particularly when people were constantly rolling the scroll to a new place. Nobody ever thought of being courteous and re-rolling back to where he or she had originally found it."

  Gabby smiled. She knew firsthand the difficulty of locating a passage when someone else had advanced the Torah to a new section. You had to identify what was in front of you solely by knowing the context, then knowing whether this came before or after the passage you were looking for. Sometimes the process could be confusing because the reader had to know vast amounts of text to locate the starting place. "I always wondered how you kids managed what's difficult for me," she said.

  Carey turned to look at her with a mischievous curl of the lip and a glimmer in the eye. "We employed secret methods. I guess I shouldn't tell you this, but some of us put paper clips on the parchment. We knew that wasn't kosher, but we were desperate. We removed the clips just before our ceremonies, but they made impressions in the parchment."

  Gabby grinned widely. "I knew about the practice. Once I thought to prohibit you guys from doing it, but I changed my mind. Better, I argued, to have you find and practice your passages than to get discouraged."

  When Gabby didn't chastise her, Carey added a new fact; "Other kids turned the Sefer Torah over and made a small pencil mark on the blank side. That's how we discovered that our scroll was tattooed. I think it was Jonathan Turner who found the Nazi number burned into the parchment at the beginning of Leviticus. I can't remember the exact number, but I think there were six numerals and one letter from the German alphabet."

  "Wow," Gabby was incredulous. How had she missed something as important as this? Why hadn't one of the kids mentioned it to her? Perhaps they were fearful of being reprimanded for making marks on the scroll.

  As Gabby and Carey were conversing, Shenna Benjamin approached, walking with long, bouncy strides. She was in her early thirties with short frizzled red hair and rather large ears, augmented with drooping silver earrings. Gabby doubted there was an extra ounce of fat on her lean body. "How nice to see you again, Rabbi Lewyn," she offered both a warm smile and an outstretched hand. "You inspired the museum to organize this exhibition. Of course we knew about the Holocaust Torahs, but nobody thought of them as a proper subject for exhibition until the unfortunate incident at Ohav Shalom."

  Gabby introduced Carey as one of her congregation's star Bat Mitzvah students who studied from the lost scroll.

  Shenna examined the image of the Orthodox woman who, if she chose, could have made herself look a lot more attractive. "I recognize you from the photo in our display. It probably never occurred to you at the time that your picture would someday be part of an exhibit."

  "You're right," Carey rolled her eyes upward as though addressing the Almighty. "Baruch ha-Shem."

  Shenna glanced around the gallery to ascertain the number of visitors. Since its inception, she had championed the exhibition despite considerable criticism from her colleagues who believed that the subject, no matter how well treated, didn't have enough sex-appeal to attract a significant audience. They were particularly opposed to the exhibit's name, Torahs from the Museum of an Extinct People, because the Nazis never got around to building their disgusting museum. Shenna remained adamant. Sure the name had a showbiz quality to it, but that's what it took to attract an audience. The name was responsible for a lot of favorable attention.

  Gabby and Shenna stepped away from the display to share their perceptions about the community's reaction to the break-in. Gabby expressed her marvel over the speed with which the museum gathered artifacts and photos.

  "We were lucky," Shenna responded. "A number of researchers had just completed a project and were looking for something to get their teeth into. And we also had some surplus money from the Rosenbaum Trust. You know what they say, if you don't use it, you'll lose it. Let's just say the stars were lined up correctly."

  When the couple returned to the display, they found Carey in heated discussion with a youth in his mid-twenties who kept pointing to a paper in his hand. He was whispering, but she was responding in full voice. "Nobody in their right mind would fabricate a lie so comprehensive. Hitler died over fifty years ago and there isn't one shred of evidence that Jews had perpetuated the Holocaust memory to garner world sympathy. Hell, we don't need that kind of sympathy, thank you very much. In fact, we're doing quite well here in America, Israel, and Europe and we don't need any sympathy at all."

  "Not Jews in America perhaps, but Zionists. They have to justify what they've done to the Palestinians," snapped the young man.

  To Shenna Benjamin, Carey asked, "Can't you kick these idiots out?"

  Shenna shook her head in frustration. "No, this is a national museum. They have a right to their ideas."

  Carey lifted her voice above sounds of the war wafting through the speaker system. "Look," she demanded, pointing to the photo of German soldiers tattooing the Torahs.

  "They're phonies," barked the young man. "I'm not saying that the Torahs are phonies, but they were not stolen by the Germans. The ones in this exhibit are ordinary Torahs that somebody made a fortune by selling as artifacts after the war."

  "That's disgusting," Carey exploded, still capping at least a portion of her fury. "You're dead wrong about having no proof. Not only were these Torahs taken from Eastern Europe, but some were tattooed by the Germans. Look at that photo. Do you think we doctored that too? There are researchers in this institution who found this and other photos in the US Army Archives. Did the Pentagon doctor this photograph so that scholars could find it fifty years later? Gimme a break."

  "Yes, yes," he responded triumphantly, "the Torahs over in the next gallery could have come from anywhere. Why believe they were from a German cache?"

  "I haven't seen that part of the exhibit yet," Carey huffed. "But I myself have read from one of the Holocaust scrolls. The Nazis tattooed identification numbers on them, just like you know what. Let's look at the scrolls in the exhibit and see if they have tattoos. If they do, you'll have to conceded you're dead wrong."

  "You won't find them tattooed at all," he said with assurance. "Besides, they're locked up in the display cabinets. There's no way to examine them."

  That threw Carey for a moment before she looked to Gabby for help, then to Dr. Benjamin. To the young man, she said, "This woman is the museum's deputy curator and is personally responsible for this exhibit. If anybody can open a display cabinet so we can look, she can."

  "No, no, that can't be done," Shenna Benjamin responded. "The museum is filled with visitors. Perhaps after hours, but not now."

  "So what," Carey refocused her frustration. "This jerk needs some elementary education. What's the purpose of this place if not to educate the public? He doesn't believe what his eyes don't see, so let's show him something to change his mind."

  "Not all Torahs were tattooed," Gabby offered.

  "I'll take that gamble," Carey said, showing more spunk that Gabby had noticed in her before. "Baruch ha-Shem. The ones in the display cabinet are."

  "How do you know that, Carey?" Gabby asked.

  "They just are. I know it, because I feel it. That's why ha-Shem caused the Nazis to tatt
oo our sacred books in the first place. So later, we would have evidence of their villainy."

  "That's a long jump of faith," Gabby retorted. "You're presuming a lot about God that many people don't believe."

  "They don't know ha-Shem as we do in Sh'erit ha-Pletah."

  "I still can't open the display during exhibition hours," Shenna said.

  "You can if you want to. Let's bring in all those jokers outside and prove to them once and for all," said Carey. To her adversary, she barked, "If you're proven wrong, will you remove your demonstrators from the street and clear out of this museum?"

  He looked at his watch to determine how many more hours the museum would stay open. Since it was no more than two hours, it sounded like a good bargain to him. "Yes, I think I can get my boss to agree."

  "Should we get him in here?"

  "He's somewhere in the foyer talking to folks," the youth said while extracting from his vest pocket a cell phone. I can call him from here."

  Carey now looked at Shenna, who kept shaking her head negatively.

  The young man's boss arrived in the Sidney Kimmel Exhibition Gallery within minutes. It took several more to explain the argument between himself and Carey and the solution they had devised. There was a dubious expression on his face as he struggled to read the thoughts of those surrounding him. Two museum guards joined the discussion until silenced by Shenna Benjamin.

  Carey sensed that she had the initiate and tightened the proposition she offered. "If we show you that the Torahs are tattooed with German numbers, "will you stay away from the museum tomorrow?"

  The leader of the demonstration thought about that for a moment and nodded his okay. But Shenna added still another condition. "How about throughout the duration of this exhibit about the stolen Torahs?"

  That also made sense to him because if the scrolls were indeed tattooed, they'd have to consult scholars and come up with a legitimate response.

  The idea of being freed from demonstrators for the duration of the exhibit had definite appeal to Shenna Benjamin. "I must go to the admin center to get my keys. We'll need a worktable to unroll the Torahs. Who will roll the Torah and locate the tattoos?"

  "I can do that," Gabby entered the conversation. "Carey tells me Ohav Shalom's Torah was tattooed on the reverse side of the beginning of Leviticus. I'll look there first. My guess is that the Nazis tattooed all the scrolls with the same Teutonic regularity that they tattooed Jewish prisoners."

  While Shenna went to fetch her keys and gather staff to help arrange a table, word spread throughout the museum. Visitors in the main exhibitions streamed downstairs to the lower level and packed the Kimmel Gallery. It took over an hour in preparation to examine the seven Holocaust scrolls that Shenna Benjamin had amassed for her exhibition. Curious crowds of visitors, who were not entirely clear about what was happening and exactly what the museum hoped to prove, slowed the work. Whatever was going on, they didn't want to be left out. Rumors circulated that one of the Sefer Torahs was found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered at Qumran in 1947. People whispered about exhuming gravesites to glean lost secrets from the dead.

  Of the seven scrolls, Gabby found tattooed numbers on three, burned into the parchment at beginning of Leviticus. Why Leviticus, people asked? Some speculated that because Germans were a Bible reading people and Leviticus was legal rather than narrative in nature, it appealed to the German personality. Others thought that being situated midway among the Five Books of Moses, the tattoos were not likely to be removed. The Nazi coding system stimulated additional queries. Shenna Benjamin suggested that she consult with an expert on the German codes used to mark inmates in the concentration camps.

  Carey was ecstatic with triumph. The young Holocaust denier was crippled, but not vanquished. His supervisor, who looked to Gabby like an old socialist from the Bund days, admitted that his adversaries had won a small skirmish. He agreed to honor his pledge and withdraw the pickets, leaving with a pledge that the larger battle over truth would continue.

  On the way home, Gabby and Carey jabbered to each other as victorious basketball teammates. It was the first time that Gabby felt as though Carey was not voicing a mantra learned in Brooklyn, a mantra which served as a barrier to honest communication with her parents.

  "You love your job, don't you?" Carey half-asked and half-declared as they sat in Gabby's car outside the Sylerman home.

  "Most of the time, but not always," Gabby said, honestly. "This is a bad spell for me. My assistant is pregnant and confined to bed, so I have to do the job of two rabbis.

  "How do you find the time?" Carey sounded sympathetic.

  "I compress, like a computer, squeezing more into the exiting space. That isn't very satisfying, but what alternatives have I?

  "I wish I could help you."

  "Actually, there is something you could do, if you have the inclination," Gabby paused to observe a sign of willingness on Carey's part. "Rabbi Landau teaches an adult education class on Sunday afternoon on the subject of Orthodox thought and practice. Right now, I'm filling in, which means I don't even get Sunday afternoons off, that is if I'm not scheduled to officiate in a wedding. You'd be a perfect substitute for Rabbi Landau."

  "But I'm in Brooklyn."

  "What if I paid for your Shuttle flight on Saturday evening after sundown and your return to LaGuardia on Sunday evening? Baruch might miss you, but I have a budget to pay for your teaching and I'm certain Sh'erit ha-Pletah doesn't give you much pocket money."

  "They don't give me anything. I survive because my father sneaks dollars to me. The other girls also get money from their families. It's a touchy subject with Dad. I know he doesn't approve of what I'm doing, yet doesn't want me to suffer."

  "That sounds like the kind of Jewish fathers I know. Anyway, think about my proposition. You know where to reach me."

  Gabby extended her hand through the open car window. "You were magnificent this afternoon, Carey," she said. "You had the key to expose a lie for what it was. Don't be surprised if the media contacts you in Brooklyn."

  "They don't know where I am," she said.

  "They'll find you. Can I give them your phone number?"

  Carey withdrew her hand and pondered the question and its implication. "Okay. That might help to discredit those jerks. They turn my stomach."

  "Finding the tattoo was great," Gabby said. "It just never occurred to me."

  She smiled warmly. "You see, Rabbi, we have something to teach you, too." After a few steps from the car, Carey returned just as Gabby was about to pull away from the curb. "Hey, thanks for the airline ticket down here."

  "Money well spent. I'm delighted your mom is out of the hospital."

  That evening, Gabby checked Ohav Shalom's website to be certain that the last episode was properly posted. This was the first evening she had experimented with a clock on her operating system which uploaded the latest episode of her story to the website precisely at 5 p.m. Before reading it, she inserted six multicolored candles into her menorah and recited the customary blessing, followed by the Ma-oz Tur melody.

  The Fourth Night of Chanukah (CANDLE FOUR)

  THE ODYSSEY OF MORDECAI YOELSON

  From Cartagena, I traveled south by bus through the plains of Cordoba into the Andes to be united with my relatives in Bogotá. It was a surprise to discover my mishpocha to be an extremely wealthy, almost aristocratic mercantile family, engaged in a host of import and farming businesses. While maintaining their identity as Jews, they socialized with members of Colombia's most prestigious commercial and government families. I learned that it was not uncommon for high-ranking army officers to dine at their tables.

  The war in Europe that had so scarred my life had been largely peripheral to them. It was a period of great prosperity for those distant from the battlefields. Confirmation of mass atrocities in Europe had reached South America only shortly before I arrived. The community regarded me with a combination of suspicion and pity. There was no question they felt an obligati
on to help. At first, I lived in servant's quarters in their homes. But since I was unable to eat their food, they found for me a small apartment near a bus line.

  What was I to do in Bogotá? I had no training for commerce. They found a clerical job for me in one of their dry good outlets in the center city, but after a few embarrassing mistakes, they were convinced I was not meant for business. I was banished to the synagogue, assigned to train their youngsters for Bar Mitzvah and organize the daily minyan of elderly men.

  After the suffering in Europe, I could not understand how Jews could exploit their workers as my relatives did. In Colombia there was no middle class. Every place I looked, it seemed that poverty was the engine that enabled the wealthy to stay rich. The ruling class relied upon the army and the government to maintain the status quo. For many months, I refrained from confronting my family on the subject. At the first seder, I lifted the Bread of Affliction and asked how a Jew who had been in slavery, could become a slave master himself? How might I, who had been delivered from the bowels of hell in Europe, forget for a single moment the suffering of others?

  How naïve I was. My family's livelihood and status were established well before I arrived in Colombia. They were not going to risk losing what they enjoyed for the sake of impoverished Colombians. The more I spoke out, the more they distanced themselves from me. Invitations to family gatherings diminished. Once, a delegation came to my apartment to warn me against expressing myself in public. It would certainly reflect badly upon the Jewish community and entailed considerable personal danger. They assured me that if I got in trouble, the family would not come to my rescue. Where was the gratitude I should show for their generosity?