Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out

by Harry Kemelman

  “Maybe they don’t want to join a temple where women are second-class citizens,” said Molly Mandell.

  Maltzman nodded. “Maybe. Anyway, I’ve always thought if we could get the right gimmick, we could sell the temple to these people. And I was sure this time I had it. Here’s this big shot, and he’s going to be running Rohrbough, and some of our people work there. Now, he feels funny about never having been Bar Mitzvah, feels he isn’t really a Jew, and yet with a name like Segal, he feels he can’t be anything else, unless he changes his name, and he wouldn’t do that. So it came to me—the gimmick. I could kill two birds with one stone. Why don’t we give him a Bar Mitzvah, the temple, I mean. And we send out invitations to all the Jews in town, whether they’re members of the temple or not—‘You are cordially invited to join us in worship and the celebration of the Bar Mitzvah of Mr. Ben Segal of Chicago—’ Get it?”

  He could tell from their faces that they did, that they all thought it as wonderful an idea as he did.

  “So I went to see the rabbi about it. That’s why I was late getting home.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. He wouldn’t hear of it. Said it was against our religion. That you’re Bar Mitzvah when you become thirteen whether you want to or not. And he wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Well …”

  “Seems to me my father said that.”

  “I don’t understand. Wouldn’t they know in Jerusalem?”

  “And the Hadassah people would know, wouldn’t they?”

  “I guess our rabbi knows better,” said Maltzman bitterly. “He says he’s not responsible for what other rabbis do. This isn’t the first time—”

  “Maybe he feels you’re against him,” suggested his wife, as she entered to serve the main course. “All the other presidents invited him to sit in on the board of directors’ meetings and you never did. If he were at the meeting and something came up—”

  Maltzman was exasperated. “I’ve explained to you that it’s a different kind of meeting now. Until we reformed the bylaws, practically anybody could come to the meetings. There were forty-five directors plus all the past presidents. We held the meetings Sunday mornings when people came to bring their kids to the Sunday School, or when they came to the morning minyan. So those who were on the board, some of them would stay for the meeting. It was a crazy system. There’d be only about fifteen or twenty present at most meetings, but if something was proposed and somebody was against it, they’d spend the week calling all the members of the board, and the next meeting, when it was to be voted on, there’d be forty or more, and it would be voted down. You could never transact any business. Well, now we have a board of fifteen, and it’s like an executive committee. And we meet in the afternoon. And it’s every other week, instead of every week. It’s a business meeting, not just a place where you come to chew the fat. Everybody who is supposed to comes. If someone stays away two or three meetings, he’s dropped, and I’m empowered to appoint someone to take his place the way I appointed Herb Mandell here when Joe Cohen found he couldn’t make it regular. So, even if I invited the rabbi to attend the meetings, he would be unable to come every meeting. He has a wedding or a funeral or some other kind of meeting he has to go to on a Sunday afternoon. And if he didn’t come every week, we’d have to spend time when he did come explaining what the points at issue were.”

  “It seems to me,” said Molly Mandell placidly, “the big mistake we made was in giving the rabbi a lifetime contract.”

  “We didn’t give him a lifetime contract,” said Roger Streitfuss. “We offered him one and he refused it. A couple of years back, I think it was. He’s on a yearly basis. It was his own idea.”

  “That’s right,” said Maltzman. “It was the year he went to Israel. Maybe thought he might want to go back there and didn’t want to be bound by a long-term contract.”

  “So how do you work it?” asked Molly, interested. “Do you meet with him on the terms every year and then draw up a contract?”

  “Oh no. His salary is just one item in the budget. When the board votes the budget, the secretary sends him a letter telling him his contract has been renewed for the year. And that’s it.”

  “And what would happen if you wrote him and said it hadn’t been renewed?” asked Allen Glick. “I’m just asking, you understand.”

  “Gosh, I don’t know. I suppose he’d—I don’t know what he’d do,” said Maltzman.

  “I bet he’d resign,” said Roger Streitfuss. “I know he’s had trouble with other administrations, and he’s fought for his job. But he’s never actually had an official vote passed against him.”

  “You got a point there,” said Allen Glick. “What else could he do but resign? Either that, or appeal to the board to reconsider. And he’s too proud for that.”

  “With fifteen on the board, it only takes eight to vote the rabbi out,” remarked Streitfuss and then added vehemently, “If the matter came up, I’d vote against him.”

  The others understood his feeling. They all knew about the rabbi’s refusal to participate in a joint wedding ceremony with a Methodist minister when the Streitfuss girl had married a Gentile.

  “And I would, too,” Allen Glick said. “What about you, Herb? You’re on the board now. You’ve got a vote.”

  “Oh, Herb would go along,” said Molly before her husband could answer for himself. “The way I see it is if we hope to get equality for women in the service and make this a modern, up-to-date temple, we’ve got to get Rabbi Small out and get in a rabbi who’ll push for it.”

  “So you’ve got three votes already,” Streitfuss said. “All you need, Henry, is five more.”

  Maltzman’s eyes gleamed. He rubbed his hands. “Yeah, I think we might be able to bring it off.”

  Smiles appeared on the faces of his guests.

  “But we’ve got to be awfully careful about this,” Maltzman went on. “It’s got to be kept secret, because if the opposition gets wind of it …”

  14

  Stanley Doble, the janitor at the temple, was not the ideal employee. For one thing, he was unreliable. He had been known to interrupt a job of work, presumably to go for his lunch, and not return for several days because he had met someone who had suggested they drive up to Maine to bag a deer. Also, he got drunk on occasion, although, in all fairness, usually on his own time. On the other hand, he was an accomplished handyman, who could do a skillful job of carpentry, repair the plumbing, maintain the heating and air-conditioning system and was knowledgeable about electricity. While frequently exasperated by his lapses, the temple authorities felt that on the whole, it was a fair trade-off. Moreover, since the wages they paid him were not high, they winked at the outside jobs he took on.

  Most of the time, he was dressed in a dirty T-shirt and grease-stained overalls and sported a two days’ growth of beard. When shaved, and with hair combed and wearing his “good clothes,” however, he was quite presentable. Although not tall, he was powerfully built and carried himself with a kind of truculence, as if to warn taller men that he was not to be trifled with. His face was coarse and fleshy, and his eyes small with the lids half-closed, as though he were peering at the sun. The nose was bulbous and a little askew at the tip, having been smashed once in a fight. But while not an attractive man, he was usually good-natured and friendly.

  He was not wearing his good clothes when Martha Peterson bumped into him at the supermarket downtown, and there was a smudge of grease on his cheek, which was why she refused his invitation to “come and have a soda” at the drugstore. But when he asked for a date, she said, “Well, I’m free tonight.”

  His face fell. “Aw, Marty, today’s Friday, they got a service at the temple tonight and I got to clean up afterward. I was thinking about tomorrow night.”

  Because she felt it was important for her to maintain her status as the arbitrary, even capricious, conferer of favors, she said loftily, “I’m sorry, but tonight is the only night I’m free.”
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  And since the immediate was always more important to him than the responsibility of a later time, he said, “Okay, then. I guess I can make some arrangement at the temple. I’ll pick you up at your place around seven.”

  “No, you pick me up at work.”

  “Why can’t I pick you up at your place?”

  “On account I don’t want to go home by bus. I left my car to be serviced, so I won’t have it to go home with.”

  “Aw, gee, Marty.”

  “What difference does it make to you?” she asked.

  “Well, your boss, old man Jordon, him and me had a fight about some work I done for him, and I said I’d never set foot in his place again.”

  “You afraid of him?”

  “Afraid? But where I said I wouldn’t …”

  “Well, if you can’t, I guess there’s other fish in the sea.”

  He looked at her calculatingly through slitted eyes. It occurred to him that in the light of the sacrifices he was making, she would feel obligated and make suitable recompense. “All right,” he said decisively. “I’ll pick you up at seven, but you be ready now, so when I ring the bell—”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  15

  Lawrence Gore looked up inquiringly as Molly Mandell entered his office.

  “I know you don’t like me to bother you, but Mr. Jordon—”

  “Was he in this morning?” he asked quickly. “Did he—er—try to annoy you again?”

  She blushed. “No, he hasn’t been in. But the report—”

  He held up a finger. “Right. The Ellsworth Jordon quarterly report. It’s due today. I haven’t forgotten it. As a matter of fact, I spoke to him this morning.” He tilted back in his swivel chair. “And he invited me for dinner tonight.”

  “So he can go over the report with you?”

  “I suppose. And he’s letting me have his Peter Archer soup tureen.”

  “So he finally decided to let you borrow it for the exhibition?”

  “Oh, I think he was going to all along. It’s just his way. But I called him this morning and told him I was taking the collection to the museum tonight and it was now or never. So he said okay, I could pick it up this evening and he invited me to dinner.”

  “How are you taking it in?” she asked curiously.

  “In my beachwagon.”

  “You going alone?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Because it’s very valuable, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is.”

  “You ought to have someone with you. You could get into an accident and—”

  “You’re right, Molly, as usual.” He thought for a minute. “I’ll ask Billy. Have him come in, will you, Molly.”

  When the young man appeared, he said, “I’m taking the Peter Archer silver into Boston, to the museum tonight. How would you like to come along and ride shotgun?”

  “Gee, that would be swell. Shall I meet you at your house? What time?”

  “Oh, I’m coming to your house. The old man invited me to dinner. I’m picking up his soup tureen—”

  “I knew he was going to let you have it. He had Martha shine it up the other day.”

  “So it’s all set. We’ll go back to my place right after dinner, and you can help me load the stuff in the car.”

  Molly reminded Gore of the Jordon report again at noon, and he said he’d get on it as soon as he returned from lunch. But he met some customers at lunch and it was after two when he got back. When she asked him about it once again, he said, “I’ve been thinking it over. If I bring it with me, I’ll have to go over it with him and discuss it item by item. I could be there till midnight. I’ll tell him I’m sending it by mail.”

  “But he’s such a stickler for getting his reports on the day they’re due. And it’s due today.”

  He grinned impishly at her. “Well, that still gives me until midnight. And if it’s dropped in the mail after five it will be too late for the Saturday delivery. So I could drop it off at the post office anytime during the weekend, and he’d still get it Monday.”

  She looked doubtful, and asked, “Is it something I can do?”

  He pinched his lower lip, looking at her speculatively. “You know, as a matter of fact, you can. There’s really nothing very involved. Here, let me show you.” He got out the Ellsworth Jordon folder. “These are purchases and these represent sales, mostly stocks, but there are some real estate transactions, too. So you list these together—”

  “I had some book keeping in high school.”

  “Believe me, that’s good enough. That and your good common sense. All you have to do is list these in one column and these in another. You itemize them, of course, but it’s pretty much all spelled out. Just follow the form on the earlier reports and do a good typing job.”

  She was not nearly finished by closing time, but she offered to work on it at home.

  “I hate to ask you to,” he said.

  “You’re not asking me. I’m volunteering.”

  “But won’t Herb—”

  “Herb is running the Brotherhood service at the temple tonight. And I’ve got to stay home anyway to baby-sit for his mother.”

  “Then she—”

  “She goes right upstairs after dinner, and by eight o’clock she’s fast asleep. Really, I don’t mind. It will give me something to do.”

  “Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind. I’ll make it up to you.”

  16

  Maltzman heard the phone ringing just as he got to the door. He hurriedly fished for his key on the chance it was for him. Sure enough, as he opened the door, he heard his wife say, “Oh, he’s coming in right now. Just a minute.” She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “It’s Mr. Segal.”

  He took the instrument from her and said, “Mr. Segal? How are you? … Fine … No, not yet. I tried to contact him a couple of times and was unable to reach him … Yeah, I understand … I’ll get hold of him in the next day or two … Oh sure, I’ll let you know as soon as I hear … Fine … Fine … Bye now.”

  He replaced the receiver and explained, “About the house lot on the Point. These big shot financiers, they want something, and they think you get it”—he snapped his fingers—“just like that.”

  “And did you try to contact Ellsworth Jordon?”

  “Of course not, but I don’t have to tell him that.”

  “Are you worried that—”

  “I’m worried that Ellsworth Jordon might not want to deal with me and will say that the land is not for sale. Or he might ask some ridiculous price that even Ben Segal wouldn’t be willing to pay.”

  “Maybe you could get somebody else, Dalton Realty maybe, to front for you?”

  “And split the commission? Like hell.”

  “So what are you planning to do?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. I might see Larry Gore, who handles some of his business. He’s a reasonable guy, and I know he thinks well of me because he recommended me to Segal. I could talk to him and lay my cards on the table and maybe—”

  “Maybe you’re just imagining things, Henry,” said his wife. “Maybe you’re just working yourself up like the man in that story who goes to borrow a lawn mower from his neighbor. Jordon might be anxious to sell. At least, you ought to ask him.”

  He pursed his lips as he considered. “You know, Laura, you got a point. I’ll call that sonofabitch right now and lay it on the line. Hand me the phone.”

  “Why don’t you wait until tomorrow to call?” she urged.

  He stared at her. “Tomorrow? Saturday? Why tomorrow?”

  “Well, you know you always feel better, more relaxed after—after—”

  “I feel relaxed enough right now. Give me that Goddam phone.”

  17

  When Billy opened the door to admit Lawrence Gore, Jordon called out from the living room, “You’re late, Larry.” A moment later, when Gore joined him, he pointed to the carriage clock on the mantelpiec
e.

  Gore looked at his wristwatch. “Are you sure, Ellsworth? Mine says just six.”

  “You bet I’m sure. That clock is absolutely right. I check it every day with the radio time signals. You’re five minutes late.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, Ellsworth.” He slid the bracelet off his wrist and, peering at the clock, made a show of resetting his watch.

  “All right, all right, let’s not waste any more time,” said the old man, as though conceding a major point. “Martha’s got a date for tonight and wants to leave early, so let’s not keep her waiting.” And waving his arms, he shooed Gore and Billy into the dining room.

  As Gore spread his napkin, he remarked, “Albert Megrim was in this morning. He said you were planning to blackball someone I proposed for the Agathon, Ben Segal.”

  Jordon chortled. “That’s right. And not half an hour ago, Henry Maltzman called me about buying my land on the Point for this same Ben Segal.”

  “He told you who his principal was? That doesn’t sound like Henry Maltzman.”

  “I told him I wouldn’t even discuss it with him unless he did.”

  “Well, I guess he figures you wouldn’t do him out of his commission.”

  “No commission.”

  “But—”

  “I turned him down.” He smiled broadly.

  Gore looked mystified. “You know this man, Segal?”

  “Nope. Never laid eyes on him.”

  “Then …” Gore took a swallow of water. “This Ben Segal is from Chicago. He’s big financier. He’s taking over the Rohrbough Corporation and plans to operate it. Now the last time I went over your holdings with you, that land on the Point was one of the properties you said you wanted to sell. Considering the price you’re asking, you’re not likely to get a buyer in a hurry. I’d say Ben Segal is the best chance you’re going to have in a long time.”