Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry (15 page)

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“The Board meeting began at ten; but a number of members arrived earlier, since they had children in the religious school which began at nine. Before that, at eight-thirty, was the morning minyan when the rabbi normally arrived on Sundays. After the service, he would go visit the classrooms, and at ten join the Board of Directors at their meeting. Since it was a special privilege, he tried to attend as often as possible; of all the rabbis in the area, he alone was permitted at Board meetings.

But this Sunday he did not appear at the minyan or at religious school classes. Instead he was at his own breakfast table in bathrobe and slippers having eggs and toast, the diet Miriam considered proper for a sick man.

At the temple, no one commented particularly on his absence; several times before he had been unable to attend. But Mortimer Schwarz and Marvin Brown felt it had special significance.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” said Schwarz. “He’s thought it over and found he hasn’t a leg to stand on. If he were to make a fight of it – and he’d have to – and were beaten, he’d either have to resign or back down. He doesn’t want to do either one so he just stayed away.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Well, you know, Marve, I think this kind of changes things. With the rabbi not here, maybe you should give a committee report. This might be a good time to ask for an increase in your budget. You don’t have to mention Hirsh. You could just talk of the need to build a road.”

Just then Arnold Green, the corresponding secretary, signaled Schwarz to come over.

“What’s up, Arnie?”

Green drew the president to a corner and held out a letter. “Read this. It was in the Board mailbox when I came in. According to the postmark, we must have got it Saturday. It’s from the rabbi. I thought I better speak to you before I read it to the Board.”

Schwarz read the letter quickly, then folded it and put it back in the envelope. When he spoke his voice was intense. “Look, Arnie, I don’t want this read at the meeting today. I want you to forget you ever received it, understand?”

“But I’m supposed to read all communications received.”

“Well, you weren’t supposed to received this one. It was addressed to me, and I want you to promise you won’t say a word about it.”

“What’s it all about?”

“I don’t know a hell of a lot more than you do, but unless I get a chance to find out, this organization can be split wide open. You remember what happened when his contract came up for renewal. You wouldn’t want that again, would you?”

“Of course not. But when the rabbi sends a letter to the Board, he’s going to wonder why it wasn’t read.”

“But he’s not here today. Don’t worry – it’ll get read. But it’ll keep for a week.”

“If that’s the way you want it.”

“That’s the way I want it. Now let’s get the meeting going.”

The rabbi’s got a touch of the grippe,” Dr. Sigman explained when the Board members had settled into their places. “Had it myself last week. He should be up and around by the middle of the week.”

“I just got over it a couple of days ago,” remarked Bob Fine. “And I was going to call you, Doc, but when your Shirley told Myra you’d had it, too, I figured you wouldn’t have anything to prescribe so why not save myself a few bucks?”

Dr. Sigman laughed. “I’ll have to talk to Shirley about giving away my secrets.”

Sitting well to the back in the room, Marvin Brown managed to catch the president’s eye. Schwarz nodded briefly and called the meeting to order. The secretary read the minutes, then he called for the reports of the committee. Marvin Brown did not offer a report, but when the New Business was announced he raised his hand and was recognized.

“I don’t know if I should have given this during committee reports, but I’m planning to make a motion so I thought I’d hold it until now. Before I make my motion, I’d like to give a few words of explanation.”

“You’re supposed to make your motion, then if it’s seconded and the president calls for discussion you can make your explanation.” Al Becker, last year’s president, was a stickler for parliamentary rules.

“Well, that’s all right, Al, but suppose nobody seconds my motion. Then I don’t get a chance to explain.”

“So it means the explanation isn’t necessary.”

“Yeah, well then if I quit as chairman of the Cemetery Committee, and you ask me why, I’ll tell you the reason was in the explanation you didn’t let me give.”

“Look, fellows, there’s no sense getting sore about this,” Schwarz interposed. “You’re absolutely right about the correct procedure, Al, but it sounds as though Marve has a beef and I think we ought to hear it. I can rule him out of order if in my opinion he’s not talking to the point.”

“That’s just the point,” Becker objected. “How can you tell if he’s talking to the point when he hasn’t made a point yet?”

“Aw, let him talk.”

“I’m not trying to keep him from talking. I just say we ought to operate according to the rules. But you guys want to do it this way, go ahead.”

“All right, Marvin.”

“Well, it’s like this. I’m damn sick and tired of trying to sell what can’t be sold. It’s a thankless job. Now I’m a salesman by profession and a salesman depends on his confidence. And this assignment of the Cemetery Committee – I tell you, fellows, I’m losing my confidence. It seems to me that most of you don’t have the slightest idea of how important the cemetery is to the congregation. Most of you take the attitude that it’s some kind of joke. Oh, I don’t mind you whistling a funeral march when I get up to give my report. I can take a joke as well as the next guy, but what bothers me is that you’re not serious about the thing itself. All these wisecracks about my getting you coming and going, insurance while you’re living, and a plot in the cemetery when you’re not – that’s well and good; but sometime we’ve got to look at this realistically, and as far as I’m concerned the sometime is now.”

“So what do you want, Marve?”

“I want you to think about what this cemetery can mean for a progressive organization like ours. This community is growing. Someday, and it’s not far off, there’s going to be another temple in Barnard’s Crossing, maybe a couple of them. And their membership won’t be made up entirely of newcomers to the area. Maybe one of the temples will be Reform and I’ll bet there’ll be a lot of our members who will feel like switching. But if they own a family plot with us, or if a member of their family is buried there – a husband, a wife, a father, a child – wouldn’t that make them think twice before they leave us? And then think of the money. A cemetery can be a gold mine. We charge about four times what the town charges for a lot in the public cemetery. In ten or fifteen years, it could cut our dues, or if it’s operated right enable us to expand.

“Now, what are the problems I’m faced with? First off, most of our members are young people. They haven’t even started to think about maybe God forbid they’ll need a plot someday. And let’s face it, when you ask someone to plank down a hundred and fifty-odd bucks for a lot which he doesn’t think he’s going to need – and I for one hope he doesn’t – it’s a lot of dough. What’s more, a lot of our members work for some of the big corporations and they don’t know when they might be transferred to another city. So are they going to come back here to be buried? Well, I got some ideas on the subject. I think we ought to sell lots on the installment plan. I’d like to see members pay as little as ten bucks a year, which could be billed with their membership dues. And I’m in favor of having a clause in the contract to the effect that they can sell the lot back to us anytime they want without losing money. In that way, if they’re transferred, they can always get their money back. I’m even toying with the idea of maybe selling lots like a kind of insurance policy, where if the member dies before he has paid in full the widow doesn’t have to pay any more.”

“Is this the motion you’re making, Marve?”

“No, that isn’t my motion. I just mentioned all this to show that your committee is thinking about their job all the time. I’ve had prospects make the kind of objections I’ve mentioned. But,” and here he looked around to make sure he had their attention, “the biggest argument my prospects give me is, ‘See me when you get a cemetery. All you’ve got now is an abandoned hayfield.’ And that’s the truth. That’s all we’ve got there right now. A hayfield with a saggy wire fence running along the main road and a tumbled-down stone fence running along one side. We don’t have a chapel. We don’t have flowers and shrubbery to make the place look halfway decent. We don’t have the place properly fenced off. We don’t have a road to give us full access to the cemetery, the back plots especially. That’s the main trouble right now.”

“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.”

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.”