The committee was taken with Rabbi Shindler, but as they discussed him, second thoughts began to develop. Not that they doubted his ability as a preacher; they had been more than satisfied with the sample taped sermons he had sent them, which had led to his being called in the first place. Nor could they cavil at the impression he had made during the interview. He had been straightforward, self-possessed and sincere, like a good salesman who believed in his product and had gone to the trouble to make adequate preparation for his presentation.
“Of course, we’d want to check with his congregation—”
“I don’t know that we could get much out of them, it’s been eight years since he left. Chances are that the same guys might not even be there.”
“Well, at least we ought to try to get a line on him from National Agrochemical,” said Drexler.
“Gosh, we can’t do that, Marty,” said Raymond. “He’s still working for them. They might not like it if they thought he was looking around for another job. You know how these companies are.”
“But we can’t just take him on his own say-so. The whole story could be made up,” Drexler insisted.
“Well, we know he’s a rabbi because it was the seminary that gave us a line on him. Right? And we know he can preach because there’s those sermons on the tapes. And we’re all agreed he looked good to us.”
“That’s right, but there’s something that bothers me,” said Arnold Bookspan. “Those tapes, they were made right in the synagogue. Right? So, how come he made them?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean why should a rabbi make a tape of his sermon?”
“Well, a lot of rabbis, they want to have a record.”
“Yeah, but then they write them out first. I mean that if he was making tapes of his sermons, maybe he was already looking for a job back then and was making them to send out to congregations that might be interested in hiring.”
“You got a point there, Arnold.”
“Yeah, but that could’ve been toward the end,” said Barry Meisner, who was in the insurance business, “when he was looking around, and that would be all right in my book. I tell you frankly, I’m sold on the guy. I can just see myself acting the same way he did. I’ve been in positions where I’ve had a deal going, and it’s crapped out through some misunderstanding that was nobody’s fault really, and I’ve had to rethink the whole business and start on a new tack. We all have. And then we go ahead on the new angle, and plenty of times it works out even better than if the original deal had gone through as planned. So I can see myself in the picture he painted. And I can see myself working up a presentation for this meeting, same way he did, and I’d plan it out pretty much the same way.”
“Well, maybe that’s what gets me,” Bookspan insisted. “I mean, like you say, if I were going to sell a couple of gross of raincoats to some big outfit where I’d never called before, I’d do it just this way. I think, I hope, I’d be as smooth as this guy.”
“So?”
“So that’s the trouble with him; he’s just like us.”
“So we’re back where we started from. You know, all this takes time and we don’t have too much time,” Raymond observed. The boys were the salt of the earth, but sometimes it was hard to get them to come to a decision, especially when he tried to get complete agreement. Division, he felt, with one group voting down the other side just made for bad feelings.
“Yeah, but we can’t just take anybody,” said Bookspan.
“I’m not so sure. It’s only for three months.”
“Or it could be a lot longer if the rabbi decides not to come back.”
Geoff Winer was constrained to speak. He had only recently set up his business, Winer Electronics, in the area. Bert Raymond had done the necessary legal work for him and had got him to join the temple organization. “Look guys, I’m new in the area, and don’t think I don’t appreciate your asking me to serve on this committee. But I think, if you don’t mind my saying so, being new and all that, that we’re going about this in the wrong way. I mean, we’re going after the wrong sort of guy. You take a young man, there’s got to be something wrong with him or he wouldn’t want to come here to take a substitute job where he don’t even know how long he’s going to last. And a middleaged man would be someone who has a job, and he wouldn’t leave to take a temporary job unless he were pretty bad and thought he was going to be fired. So I think we ought to consider an older man.
“Now this rabbi that was the rabbi in the temple where I used to go in Connecticut where I came from—in fact, he married me—he’s just retired after being rabbi in that same temple for thirty years. They made him like rabbi emeritus. Now, don’t get the idea that Rabbi Deutch is some old geezer with a cane. He’s sixty-five, but he’s got a lower golf handicap than I have.”
“Does he have an accent or something? I mean, does he speak good English, or is he one of those old-timers?” asked Drexler.
“Does he have an accent or something? I mean, does him. Look, he was born here, and so was his father, and I think even his grandfather, or maybe he came here when he was a little kid. He’s related to the New York Deutch family, you know, the bankers.”
“So why would he want to be a rabbi? Why didn’t he go into the banking business?” Drexler asked the question, but it had occurred to most of them.
“Look, let’s face it; there are guys like that. You know, it’s like a crusade—”
“How about the rebbitzin?”
Winer made a circle of thumb and forefinger to indicate complete approval. “Believe me, the rebbitzin is real class, a Wellesley graduate, or maybe Vassar or Bryn Mawr—anyway, one of the top women’s colleges. Matter of fact, if you want to know something, she’s a Stedman.”
“What’s a Stedman?”
“Dan Stedman. Didn’t you ever hear of him?”
“You mean the commentator guy? On TV?”
“That’s right. That’s her brother.”
“Sounds pretty good,” said Raymond. “Could you give him a ring and arrange to have him come down so we could get a look at him and see what he sounds like, maybe have him take a Friday evening service?”
“Unh-unh.” Winer shook his head. “A man like Rabbi Deutch you don’t ask him to come down for a tryout. If you guys are interested, I could sound him out. If he’s interested, we could drive down to see him and talk to him.”
CHAPTER
SIX
Suddenly the Smalls found themselves popular. People they hardly knew found an occasion to drop in on them—to wish them a safe and pleasant flight, but especially a safe one. “We were planning to go about this time, but my wife thinks we ought to wait until things quiet down a bit—fella could get hurt when one of those bombs go off [self-conscious chuckle]—so we decided to take a trip to Bermuda instead.”
To give them names and addresses of people they should look up. “I met him when I was there four years ago, and he’s doing some very important research at the university. One of the outstanding men there. I’m writing to tell him you’re coming. You call him as soon as you get settled.”
To show them the itinerary of the trip they took last year together with colored slides and photographs of the places they had seen and to make sure that they wouldn’t miss what they regarded as the highlights of their trip. “I took this on a kind of hazy day, so you don’t get the full effect, Rabbi, but I tell you, the view is breathtaking. And be sure and see ….”
Meyer Paff, one of the pillars of the temple, came to see the Smalls. He was a huge tun of a man with large features. His sausagelike fingers closed over the rabbi’s hand in greeting. “Take my advice, Rabbi, don’t get sucked into the sight-seeing rat race. I been there four times already. The first time they had me going from early morning till night. After the first week I said I’m not moving from the hotel. And that’s what I did all the other times we went. I’d stay in the hotel, sitting around the pool, shmoosing, playing cards. The missus, of course, she wante
d to see things. She’d take one of these tours at the drop of a hat. So I told her to go and she could tell me about it afterward. You know, any other country I wouldn’t think of letting her go alone, but in Israel, you feel it’s safe. There’s always Hadassah ladies that if she don’t know them, she at least knows somebody they know. It’s like family. And I’ll tell you something: Just before coming home, I’d buy a bunch of slides of different places and when people asked me, ‘You saw such a place, didn’t you?’ I’d say, ‘You bet. Terrific. I got some swell shots of it.’”
Ben Gorfinkle came to see him. “I was talking to my brother-in-law. He’s editor of the Lynn Times-Herald you know. He thought maybe you’d be interested in writing some pieces for the paper.”
“But I’m no reporter,” said the rabbi.
“I know, but what he had in mind was background stuff, personal impressions, local color. That kind of thing. All he could pay would be regular space rates. I don’t know what it would come to—probably not much, and of course, he couldn’t promise to run them until he’d seen them—but the way I look at it, it would keep your name in front of the public.”
“I see,” said Rabbi Small. “Well, thank him for me, and thank you.”
“You’ll do it?” Ben asked eagerly.
“I can’t tell until I’m there.”
“I really think you ought to try, Rabbi,” said Gorfinkle, barely masking his disappointment.
“I understand, Mr. Gorfinkle.”
Mr. Jacob Wasserman, the elderly founder of the temple, frail and with parchmentlike skin, came to see him. “You’re wise to go now, Rabbi, while you’re young and can enjoy it. All my life I’ve promised myself I’d go, and always something came up, so I couldn’t. And now, when I’m under the doctor’s care you could say every minute, it’s too late.”
The rabbi led him to a chair and eased him into it. “They’ve got doctors there too, Mr. Wasserman.”
“I’m sure, but to go on a trip like this, it takes more than just wanting. The heart got to spring up at the idea, and with me, the way I am now, a little walk or maybe a ride in the car for an hour when my son drives me, or Becker comes, is already enough. But it makes me happy that you’re going.”
The rabbi smiled. “All right, I’ll try to enjoy it for both of us.”
“Good, you’ll be my ambassador there. Tell me, Rabbi, this man who’s coming to take your place, this Rabbi Deutch, you know him?”
“I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard about him. He has a very good reputation. From what I hear, the congregation is lucky to get him.”
The old man nodded. “Maybe someone not so good would have been better.”
“How do you mean, Mr. Wasserman?”
“Well, there are parties, cliques, I don’t have to tell you.”
“Yes, I know,” said the rabbi softly.
“And you’ll be gone how long?”
“Oh, three months anyway. Maybe more.”
The old man put a blue-veined hand on the rabbi’s forearm. “But you’re coming back?”
The rabbi smiled. “Who can tell what will happen tomorrow, let alone in three months?”
“But right now you’re planning to come back?”
His relationship with the old man was such that he could neither fence with him nor fib to him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
“Ah,” said Wasserman, “that’s what I was afraid of.”
Hugh Lanigan, Barnard’s Crossing chief of police, came to see him. “Gladys had a little gift for the missus that she asked me to drop off.” He deposited a gift-wrapped package on the table.
“I’m sure Miriam will be very pleased.”
“And look,” he said, “if you’re worried about the house being closed up all the time, I’ve given orders to have the man on the beat and the cruising car check the place regular.”
“Why, thanks, Chief. I was meaning to drop down to the station to leave a key and tell them when we were going.”
“I suppose you got to take this trip sometime.”
“Got to?” The rabbi looked surprised.
“I mean, it’s like a priest going to Rome.”
“Oh, I see,” said the rabbi. “Something like that, only more so. Actually it’s a religious injunction with us, and for all Jews, not just for rabbis.”
Lanigan still was trying to understand. “Like a Moslem going to Mecca?”
“NO-o, not really. It doesn’t confer any special grace, any special religious points.” He considered how to answer. “I feel it like a kind of pull, like what I imagine draws a homing pigeon back to where it came from.”
“I see,” said the police chief. “Then I guess not every one of you has it, or a lot more of you would go.”
“A lot of homing pigeons don’t get back either, I suppose.” He tried again. “You see, our religion is not just a system of belief or of ritual practices that anyone can assume. It’s a way of life, but more than that, it’s intertwined somehow with the people themselves, with the Jews as a nation. And the two, the religion and the people, are somehow tied in with the place, Israel, and more particularly Jerusalem. Our interest in the place is not accidentally historical. I mean, it is not significant merely because we happened to come from there, but rather because it is the particular place assigned to us by God.”
“You believe that, Rabbi?”
The rabbi smiled. “I have to believe it. It’s so large a part of our religious beliefs that if I doubted it, I’d have to doubt the rest. And if the rest were in doubt, our whole history would have been pointless.”
Chief Lanigan nodded. “I guess that makes sense.” He offered his hand. “I hope you find what you’re looking for there.” At the door, he stopped. “Say, how are you getting to the airport?”
“Why, I expect we’ll take a cab.”
“A cab? Why that will cost you ten bucks or more. Look, I’ll come down and drive you to the airport.”
Telling Miriam about it afterward, he said, “It’s curious that of all the people who came to see me, it should be the one Gentile who offered to take us to the airport.”
“He’s a dear, good friend,” Miriam agreed, “but the others probably thought you had already made the necessary arrangements.”
“But he was the one who thought to ask.”
CHAPTER
SEVEN
As she hung his coat in the hall closet, his eyes flicked around the room for some sign of another occupant—a pipe in an ashtray, a pair of slippers beside the easy chair. After all these years, Dan Stedman told himself he was not jealous of his former wife, only curious. If she wanted to take a lover, it was no business of his. Certainly he had not been celibate since their divorce. He told himself that she meant nothing to him now, and yet although he had been in town for several days, as a kind of insurance he had held off coming to see her in response to her letter until today, his last day in the States. But as he had mounted the stairs to her apartment, he could not help feeling a quickening of interest, an excitement at the thought he was going to see her.
She joined him in the living room. She was still attractive, he noticed objectively. Tall and slender with her bobbed hair brushed back around her ears and her fresh complexion, she did not look her—he made a mental calculation—forty-five years. As she rounded a table to sit opposite him, he decided she was one of the few women who could wear slacks successfully. She got up again immediately to go to the sideboard.
“Drink?” she asked.
“A little gin.”
“On the rocks, I believe?”
“That’s right.”
She regarded him covertly as she poured. He was still distinguished-looking, she thought, but he looked neglected. His trousers bagged at the knee—she would have seen to it that they were pressed—and his shirt cuffs looked frayed—she would have noticed and insisted he change to another shirt before going out.
“I called you and called you. I must have tried a dozen
times. And then I decided to write.”
“I was at Betty’s in Connecticut for a few days. I just got back last night,” he fibbed.
“And how is she? I should write to her.”
“She’s fine.”
“And Hugo?”
“All right, I guess. He’s retired from his congregation now, you know.”
“Oh, yes, I remember you saying he was thinking about it the last time I saw you. Is he enjoying retirement?” She handed him his drink and then sat down in a straight-backed chair opposite him.
He grinned. “Not particularly. There was so much he was planning to do once he was retired and had the time. But you know how those things work. When he was busy at the temple, he had an excuse, and now that he isn’t, he doesn’t know how to begin all the projects he stored up all those years. It’s even harder on Betty. He’s underfoot.”
“Poor Hugo.”
“But he’s getting another job, so it won’t be bad. He’s substituting for a rabbi in Massachusetts who’s going to Israel for a few months. There’s even a chance that he might be asked to stay on.”
“Oh, that’s good.” She looked at him over her drink.
“And how have you been?”
Monday the Rabbi Took Off Page 4
