by Howard Fast
“I don’t agree with that,” Osner said. “The bastards who did the job were desecrating a synagogue, not a church.”
“Still and all,” Frome said, “the rabbi has a point. The building was a church, and even though we hold services there, it remains a church in a manner of speaking. Certainly, when we sell it to the Unitarians, it will become a church again — if they call it a church?”
“They do.”
“I don’t know what the devil we’re doing, meeting about this,” Osner said. “This kind of an outrage against Jews is as old as time. To hell with it! We paint over it and forget about it.”
“I don’t think we can forget about it,” Mel Klein said slowly. “We live here. It’s too close to the Holocaust.”
The old man, Oscar Denton, said, “When we moved in here, twenty years ago, we were the first Jewish family to settle in Leighton Ridge. At first, it never occurred to them. Maybe the thought was impossible up here in the year nineteen twenty-eight. And since I was a builder and worked alongside my men, maybe it didn’t occur to them because it conflicted with their concept of what a Jew should be. So they were pretty nice to us until they found out, and then they made life pretty rotten for my kids and uncomfortable for us. But nothing overt. They don’t burn crosses on the Ridge, and nothing like this business of the swastikas ever happened. I would not paint over them. I would make a point of them. I would call in the newspapers from Danbury and from New Haven and from Hartford too, and the New York Times, yes, absolutely. Let them take pictures so people won’t get smug and say it can’t happen here.”
“For God’s sake,” Joe Hurtz exclaimed, “why are we making this kind of a fuss over the actions of some stupid kids? Paint it over and forget about it. Kids see things. They imitate. So what?”
“No,” Mel Klein muttered. “No —no way.”
“I’d like to hear from Alan,” David said.
“I’ve been listening,” Alan said, “and of course I saw the swastikas. I’m not Jewish, but I’m married to a Jewish lady whom I love dearly and I have two Jewish kids. It puts me kind of close to the problem, but not as close as you are. At the same time, I can’t help being astonished by the calm manner in which you discuss this. I was silent but raging inside myself. Damnit, Joe, what do you mean, stupid kids? If some idiot killed your child, would you dismiss it because it was the act of an idiot? And do you think Nazism was the product of the brains and culture of Germany? I can tell you it was the product of all the stupid, demented rot that existed in Germany. And a church was defaced, not merely a synagogue, so if there was ever a time to bring Jew and Christian on the Ridge together on a very serious matter, this is it. I would bring Martin Carter into this right away. That’s only a suggestion. I’m not a member of the board.”
“To me, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill,” Osner said. “This is our affair, not Martin Carter’s.”
Denton and Klein and Eddie Frome said they agreed with Buckingham, and together with David, they made a firm majority.
“I’ll just talk to Martin,” David said. “We’ll see what he suggests.”
“I’m disagreeing with Jack Osner too much,” he told Lucy that night as they settled down in bed. “I think he’s beginning to hate my guts.”
“You have more politics here than in Washington.”
“In a manner of speaking — yes, we do.”
“Did you think it would be that way?”
“No — no, I never dreamed that it would. I guess the war spoiled me for common sense. The kids were always so glad to see a rabbi — oh, the devil with it, Lucy. If they fire me, they fire me.”
“And what about Mike Benton?”
“He’s frightened. He could live with war, but jail scares him. He’s been subpoenaed by the Un-American Committee, and they’ll ask him to name names, same as with the others. It’s only three years since Adolf Hitler died in his bunker in Berlin, and we’re trying every trick of his on the home ground.”
“Come on, it’s not as bad as all that.”
“It’s as bad.”
News travels in a small place like Leighton Ridge, and the next morning Martin Carter turned up at the old parsonage. Lucy was feeding Aaron, and David was having his second cup of coffee. “I sometimes do the breakfasts,” he explained. “She feeds my son and heir, although being a rabbi’s heir is not much to boast about. Let me cook up some eggs for you.”
Carter declined and accepted a cup of coffee. “I heard about the swastikas,” he said.
David waited.
“Nothing like this ever happened before,” Carter said. “I’ve been here a long time. Nothing like this ever happened before. Sure, we have our Jew-haters, but show me a small town in America that doesn’t have them. Ours have always been pretty mild.”
“I think it’s kids,” David said, “but we can’t drop it and let it pass just because they’re kids.”
“Oh, no. It’s a very particular desecration. Selling the old church to your people was, I felt, a significant act of brotherhood, very necessary after the Holocaust — but the building remains an old church, a sort of monument to our beginnings here in America. We can’t allow this to pass quietly, David, and simply paint over the swastikas and pretend it never happened.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I think we ought to have a joint service, perhaps in midweek. We won’t use any church. I can get the Board of Selectmen to let us have the meeting hall, and we’ll make it an open affair. I think each of us ought to say a few words there.”
“Very few for me,” David said. “I think you carry the burden.”
As with so many small Connecticut towns, the legislative part of the government was the town meeting. Basic changes in the town’s criminal and civil code were brought to the town meeting, as well as zoning questions and restrictive covenants. Attendance was never compulsory, but neither was this night’s kind of attendance very common, the seven hundred seats in the hall filled, with people in the aisles and standing in back. At this point everyone in town and in the surrounding towns and cities, and in New York too, knew about the swastikas.
Todd Burns, the town manager, opened the meeting by saying that all of the selectmen wanted to be speakers here tonight, but they decided to leave the issue to the two men of the cloth involved, Rabbi Hartman and the Reverend Carter.
Rabbi Hartman felt strange. He still had to nerve himself to speak to his congregation, and here was a larger and mixed group. “For the first time,” he said, “I knew how the Negro felt when he looked out of his window and saw a burning cross in front of his house. But I don’t fully know how the Reverend Martin Carter felt when he saw this desecration on the oldest symbol of democracy this country has, the Congregational church. The people and the movement that raised up these symbols, the symbol of the hooked cross, caused the deaths of fifty million human beings and the crippling of a hundred million more. No one can ever calculate the suffering they brought upon mankind. Does anyone want us to create a similar movement here at home? I am still fairly new in Leighton Ridge. Martin Carter has been here much longer. He has agreed to talk about this.”
Carter said, “When Rabbi Hartman called us the oldest symbol of democracy this country has, he was quite correct. The Pilgrims built our first church in America, holding that a man needs no intercessor before his God, that each man is responsible for his deeds, his sins, and his cruelties, and that his church is a symbol of a man’s dignity, his independence, and his willingness to participate in the democratic process. That is why, years ago, when we were a much smaller town than we are now, the town meetings were held in the Congregational church, which was as often called the meeting house as it was the church. When the time came to forsake the old church, which would no longer hold our congregation, I wondered what would become of it. We are not affluent enough to turn the church and the parsonage into a museum and maintain such a museum — yet this should be done. For the church was built in the seventeen seventi
es, and the parsonage is even older. How could we face the thought of these two beautiful old buildings being torn down —”
Lucy, sitting with Della Klein, whispered, “He’s forgotten what it takes to keep that beautiful old building warm in winter.”
“— but fortunately, we never faced that. Three of our Jewish neighbors came to me and asked whether they could buy the church for a synagogue and the parsonage as a home for the rabbi they hoped to find. Of course, I was delighted. It was like an act of hope and faith, a prayer answered, and when I put it to the entire congregation, they were pleased, too. We felt that it was a God-given opportunity to affirm our faith in Christianity, so sorely shaken these past years, and to perform an act of brotherhood toward the most bitterly hounded and persecuted people on earth — yet the same people from whom God chose his Son. And now we have this act of mindless desecration. I think that tonight, by coming here and packing this place, we have performed the first act of an exorcism. As for the second part of the exorcism, that will be performed tomorrow, starting at ten in the morning. I know that most men will be at work, but women can perform it equally well. The Jewish congregation, needing larger quarters for Temple Shalom, have sold the church and the parsonage to the Unitarians, who are quite desperate for a house of prayer. But we cannot hand it over in its present condition. So at ten o’clock tomorrow, armed with paintbrush and good outside white paint, we will meet at the church and complete the exorcism. Frank Hessel, our in-church painter, tells me it will require three coats for a proper job, and he suggests outside white lead. And we’ll pray to God that we have seen the last of that unholy symbol.”
The next morning, wielding a paintbrush next to Millie Carter, and keeping an eye on Aaron and a dozen other toddlers, being watched over by two teen-agers, Lucy wondered what it all amounted to. “What do you think?” she asked Millie.
“I don’t know. I’ve been a preacher’s wife too long. I can’t listen, no matter how hard I try. But you?”
Lucy shook her head.
“Come on. Whatever you say to me is privileged. You know that.”
“Okay. I would have said, ‘We have almost a thousand people here. Let’s find the bastards who did this and whale the living daylights out of them and then turn them over to the cops.’”
“You’re kidding.”
“Am I? Do you know anyone who ever prayed himself out of the gas chambers? I’m all for sweetness and light, but a good kick in the tail sometimes leaves a longer impression.”
•
PART THREE
1951
•
You’re only going for three days,” David said. “There’s enough there for a permanent departure.”
“What’s that? Some kind of Freudian slip?”
“Come on, Lucy.”
“All right, I’m sorry. I’m packing enough for the two kids and myself. Sarah is only two, but still she has the right to a change of clothes. She’ll be the youngest flower girl there, and we may stay a day or two extra. They have a huge house and we’ll be very comfortable with my Aunt Dorothy — as you would be too, if you would only come. You have at least a dozen men in the synagogue who are just dying for you to take off so that they can conduct the service and show how classy their Hebrew is.”
“I suppose so.”
“And I just can’t buy your excuse.”
“It’s not an excuse,” he said with annoyance. “Do I have to run through it again? You come from an atheist family —”
“You knew that when you married me.”
“I know, and I’m not talking about you. But here’s your cousin John, Jewish from the word go, marrying a Jewish girl, and the ceremony is being performed by a justice of the peace.”
“He’s not just a justice of the peace. He’s one of my uncle’s best friends.”
“It’s not the kind of thing I participate in.”
“You’re not participating. You’re just watching. Is there any Jewish law against that?”
“I’m not talking about any law or prohibition. I’m simply asking you to recognize my position and exhibit some understanding. There will be a rabbi watching two Jewish kids being hitched by a justice of the peace.”
“So?”
“For heaven’s sake, it past nisht.”
“Wonderful! You’ve learned two words of Yiddish, which every German Jew calls not a language but a patois!”
“My word, you are angry.”
“Don’t I have every right to be?” Suddenly she softened and entreated him, “Davey, why do we get into these ridiculous fights? I love you so much — if you’d only try to be a nice, flexible human being. The kids in my Sunday school class say, ‘Mrs. Hartman, first you say one thing and then it becomes something else.’ I tell them that’s all right, that’s perfectly human. And it is, David, it is.”
The drive down to the Fairfield railroad station was lightened only by the chattering of the children, who, David had to admit, looked very beautiful dressed for traveling. They were both strawberry blond, both covered with freckles after the long summer, both with David’s bright blue eyes.
“They’re beautiful kids, aren’t they?” Lucy whispered into his ear.
“They should be, with the mother they chose for themselves.”
“Oh?”
“I do love you, Lucy.”
“Took you eighteen miles to say it.”
“Be careful, won’t you? And take good care of them.”
Both intimations of incompetence on my part, she thought, but said nothing, only nodded and smiled.
At the station, he waited with them, playing with the children until the train arrived. Then he kissed her and the kids and called after her, “My best to your mom and pop.”
The train clanked away, and David stood for a long moment, unmoving, thinking that this was the first time in five years that he had been separated from Lucy for more than a few hours.
But what irritated him and plucked at every guilt-ridden cell in his body was the fact that he was happy, free, alone in the world for the next three days, free to do as he pleased and go where he pleased; although he was quite aware that he was going nowhere and that here he was, at almost noon on a Friday, with a sermon to deliver and still unwritten and with the High Holy Days facing him in just another week.
None of which was enough to dampen his spirits. He felt young and vital and alert to everything he saw. The Aspetuck Reservoir was beautiful beyond words; it was as if he had never seen it before, though he had driven past it fifty times. The leaves on the trees were just beginning to turn, dancing before a light, cool breeze, and he had to think What a beautiful, extraordinary place God’s world is!
He repressed his feelings of guilt. Is it a sin to be happy? he asked himself, quelling what he knew were the reasons for his delight, but again asking himself, What else could I have done? I’m a rabbi. Could I have gone to that wedding and sat complacently while two Jewish kids are married by a justice of the peace? And suppose questions came. Nothing those characters enjoy better than tweaking a rabbi’s nose. “Did you enjoy the ceremony, Rabbi?” “You see, we break God’s commandment and nothing happens. Possibly because we are in New Jersey. Sensibly, God doesn’t visit New Jersey.”
He slipped deeper into his musings. One is always the victim in those things. Even on those increasingly rare occasions when he and Lucy brought the kids down to New York to see her parents, they could not resist working David over, albeit very gently.
His mood of lightheaded joy had vanished with his thoughts, and now he began to think of what he would put into his sermon. No matter how many times he did it, no sermon came easily, and indeed, if anything, each was more difficult than the previous one. There were wealthy congregations where the rabbi could entice a guest speaker every other week, and even pay an honorarium, a word he loathed. But what guest speaker would journey to Leighton for a Friday night audience of fifty?
What else did he have to do today? he wondered. M
yron Schillman would be around for an hour’s discussion of his Bar Mitzvah. The world as Myron Schillman turns thirteen. Myron, if your blessed rabbi used such language, he would tell you the world stinks in this goyishe year of 1951 — a strange bit of mentation for a rabbi, and suppose my parishioners could look inside my skull? Just suppose so. Firstly, the use of the word parishioner, even as a thought — heaven forbid that I should speak it aloud, and me, Rabbi David Hartman, with a brand-new shul, which of course we call a temple, it would be so old-country and Eastern European to call it a shul. But brand new, with a modern red-brick design to replace the little ancient church we started with only five years — can it be only five years? — no, closer to five and a half years ago, and there it stands, Temple Shalom, with three classrooms and an office for myself, Rabbi Hartman, and a tiny office for my secretary — if ever we can afford one — and all of it brought in for a little over sixty thousand dollars.
Now we are a going institution, with eight hundred copies of the Union Prayer Book — no, no, no, that kind of thinking is useless for either my sermon or for Myron, who will step out into the world as a man. Funny thing, you’re such a sweet kid, and now at the age of thirteen, you are to step out into this lousy, perverted world. Why am I so bitter and angry at the world, Myron? Well, let us see what the years have brought us. That war to save the world from all other wars — or was that the other one? — well, it’s six years in the past and we are at war again in Korea. Why? God knows; I do not. Something about dominoes, Myron. What else? They’ve purged the Communist Party again in Czechoslovakia. What does purged mean? No, it’s not a laxative. It’s standing an assortment of people up against an assortment of walls and shooting them. Very popular these days. And let us not forget those two lost souls who have been found guilty of stealing atom bomb secrets, although Herbie Fisher, who is the newest addition to my burgeoning congregation, says he can make an atom bomb with one hand tied behind his back, and so can anyone else who isn’t a scientific booby. But I kind of doubt that —
